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lemonade

leh-muh-NAYD · noun

AustroasiaticSanskritPersianArabicItalianFrenchEnglish

Origin

English borrowed lemonade directly from French limonade. That French word combined limon (lemon), itself descended through Italian and Arabic and Persian and Sanskrit back to an Austroasiatic root, with the French suffix -ade, which traces back through Occitan and Latin -ata to the Proto-Indo-European ending *-eh₂tos.

Journey

The fruit name itself passed through Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and Italian before reaching French as limon; once there, French speakers attached -ade to name the drink made from it, and English simply adopted that finished French word.

Related words

The -ade ending links lemonade to other French-derived drink and action words built the same way, since it descends from the same Latin -ata suffix pattern via Occitan.

More words

From Persian

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