Spices are used to flavor or color food, and therefore form a broad category that includes various plant parts: seeds (fennel, mustard, nutmeg, black pepper), fruits (mace, cayenne pepper, Chimayo pepper), barks (true cinnamon, cassia), flower parts (cloves, saffron), and roots or rhizomes (turmeric, ginger, galangal). In this post, we will examine a selected group of these spices; the remaining ones are covered in other sections. You can click on any listed spice to follow the corresponding link.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is not as modern as many people think. It is often believed to be a relatively new spice, but Cinnamomum verum (or Cinnamomum zeylanicum) has been known since ancient times. The English word cinnamon comes from the Latin term of the same name, which was borrowed from the Ancient Greek κιννάμωμον (kinnámōmon). This Greek term itself originated from a Phoenician word. We are not sure which one. It closely resembles the related Hebrew word קנמון (qinnāmōn).
It is noticeable that many languages borrowed their word for cinnamon from the German Zimt. Despite the apparent difference in form, Zimt ultimately shares the same ancient roots as cinnamon.
The tube
Surprisingly, only a few languages use this ancient root, such as Lithuanian cinamonas or Welsh sinamon. In fact, many languages adopted a Latin word—not cinnamon but canella, meaning “reed” or “cane,” a reference to the way the bark curls as it dries. English itself once used the forms canel and canella. In modern Greek κανέλα (kanéla) replaced Ancient Greek kinnámōmon.
Bark
In general, Slavic languages use a Slavic root—korica—to name cinnamon, a word originally meaning “bark.” For example, Russian has кора́ (korá) meaning “bark,” and кори́ца (koríca) meaning “cinnamon.” The same pattern appears in Czech, where kůra means “bark” and skořice is the word for “cinnamon.”
Clove
Mustard
Grape juice
Mustard is a paste prepared from the seeds of the mustard plant. Several species of mustard are cultivated, most notably Sinapis alba, Brassica juncea, and Brassica nigra. In this section, we will examine both the culinary product and the plant Sinapis alba.
The word mustard is of Latin origin and appears in many languages from different linguistic families — for example Portuguese mostarda, Hungarian mustár, or Greek μουστάρδα (moustárda). Romans used a condiment called mustum ardens “burning must”, it was made by grinding the seeds and mixing them with must, i.e. unfermented grape juice.
In North Africa and West Asia, many terms for mustard were borrowed from the Arabic خردل (ḵardal). The etymology of this Arabic form is uncertain, but it may ultimately be connected to Proto-Semitic ḥaraθ-, a verb that means “to sow, to plant seeds”, or to Sumerian 𒌑𒄯𒄯 (ḫarḫar), referring to an unidentified plant with seeds used as a spice.
Burning flavor
Mustard has a pungent flavor. For this reason, many Slavic languages — from Slovak horčica to Russian горчица (gorčíca) — derive their terms from Proto-Slavic gorьčica, a word built on gorьkъ “bitter,” which is in turn related to the verb gorěti “to burn”.
From the far north (Finnish sinappi) to the far south (Sicilian senapi), a second group of languages uses forms based on the Greek word σίνᾱπι (sínāpi). This term is believed to be Pre-Greek in origin and is probably related to another Ancient Greek plant name νᾶπυ (nâpy). If so, this would connect the mustard term to Latin napus “turnip” — another pungent root.
