Words from Vulgar Latin
18 words in Curio passed through Vulgar Latin on their way into English.
About Vulgar Latin
A range of non-formal registers of Latin, standing between Latin and the Romance languages · no native speakers today
Where
Ancient Rome → wherever Latin was spoken in conversation
When
Dates unknown
Speakers
No reliable count
No census of its speakers exists.
Family path
- Latin
- Vulgar Latin
- Old FrenchProto-West GermanicMiddle FrenchLatinItalianSpanishOld OccitanAnglo-Norman
- English
Dashed: reconstructed, never written down
Where it came from
Vulgar Latin is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward, used in conversation across many centuries, places and contexts. Scholars disagree about how far it differed from Classical Latin, and whether it was ever a distinct language or speech variety. Changes in its spoken forms help explain how Latin became Proto-Romance and then the Romance languages.
Source: Wikipedia
Family
Vulgar Latin grew out of Latin.
Languages that grew out of Vulgar Latin: French, Portuguese, Spanish.
The words, A to Z
- almond
This nut's name picked up a stray letter just from hanging around Arabic words.
- ambush
To wait for someone, you first have to hide in the shrubbery.
- bishop
A church official whose title once just meant someone keeping watch from above.
- curry
This word for a spiced dish actually cooked up out of two unrelated kitchens at once.
- embargo
A trade ban is really just an old word for slamming a bar across the door.
- grotto
A word for a small cave that quietly shares its roots with a word for a burial chamber.
- javelin
This throwing spear's name traces back to a word for a simple forked branch.
- joust
To meet an opponent head-on, so close there's no room to miss.
- lasso
The word for a roping loop actually shares its roots with the string in your shoes.
- mutton
The meat on your plate once had to leap a chain of languages before it got there.
- pastiche
A work that borrows so many flavors from other styles it becomes its own dish.
- peach
This juicy fruit's name once meant something else entirely: an apple from Persia.
- platinum
A gleaming metal named as if it were silver's poorer cousin.
- sage
One word hides two unrelated pasts — one rooted in tasting wisdom, the other in staying healthy.
- scrivener
Before typewriters, there were people whose entire job was the careful shaping of letters by hand.
- stanza
A poem's paragraph was once just a place to stop and stand.
- terrace
A flat step carved into land takes its name from the ground itself.
- vine
The plant that gave wine its name is the same word that climbs your trellis.