cascade

Cascade comes from French cascade, borrowed from Italian cascata, from cascare, meaning "to fall." That traces back through Vulgar Latin *cāsicāre to Latin cadere, and ultimately to the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱh₂d-.

The word moved from Italian into French and then English, carrying its core sense of falling with it at each step, eventually settling into English as a noun for water falling in stages.

Because it descends from Latin cadere, "to fall," cascade shares deep roots with other English words built on that same falling sense, though the facts here trace only its direct path through Italian and French.