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pantry

PAN-tree · noun

LatinOld FrenchMiddle EnglishEnglish

Origin

Pantry comes from Middle English panetrie, borrowed from Old French paneterie, which traces back to Latin panis, meaning "bread."

Journey

What began as a word tied specifically to bread widened over time into a general term for a storage room, the kind of place where all sorts of food and provisions are kept, not just loaves.

Related words

Panis, the Latin root, connects this word to a whole family of bread-related terms in French and its descendants; the facts here don't name a specific English cognate, so none is claimed.

More words

From Old French

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