camel

Camel comes from Middle English camel, from Old English camel and Old Northern French camel, from Latin camēlus, from Greek kámēlos, from a Semitic source going back to Proto-Semitic *gamal-.

The word passed from a Semitic root through Greek and Latin into French and then English, keeping roughly the same sound and meaning the whole way. A separate technical sense, a floating device used to lift ships, entered English later from Dutch.

It shares its Semitic root with Arabic jamal, Hebrew gamál, Aramaic gamlā, and Coptic čamoul — all names for the same animal, worn down through different tongues.