Sunday, August 12, 2007

Gazpacho update

Alas, "the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."*
I sent out a call to Language Hat and the response was most satisfying, if deadly for what I thought (in my ignorance) was the correct solution. The full discussion is here: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002837.php
The gazaphylakion etymology, which seemed so plausible (by a bunch of syncopes: gaz(a)ph(yl)akion?) is totally boooooogus. The likeliest etymology is provided by the learned Polyglot Vegetarian from a *kasp-aceus, meaning roughly 'made out of scraps/residue'.

To summarize his findings:
The -acho suffix is from Latin -aceus (which I should have seen), a nice productive suffix, which passes through Mozarabic to show up as -acho.
The gasp- is from a pre- (or at least non-)Roman word *kasp-, which isn't Classical Latin, but does show up in a mess of Romance languages:
Asturian caspia 'apple residue'.
Dialectal Italian caspu 'grape residue'.
French gaspaille 'cereal residue'.

To which I will only add that Meyer-Lubke, Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch p. 809, no. 9685, derives these, Sicilian kaspu 'olive dregs' Piedmontese kaspi, Bergam. kaspe, SW French gaspa all 'wine dregs' from Arabic kusb 'Satz beim Ölpressen'; but then says "doch sieht man nicht wie ein arab. Wort nach Norditalien gelanngt sein kann." "But one cannot see how an Arabic word made it to North Italy." A punto.

The helpful readers provided even earlier attestations of gazpacho in Spanish in Arte de Marear AUTHOR: Guevara, Antonio de. (1481-1545) DATE: 1513.
While earlier English versions are found in the earliest translations of Quixote. The history of the valorous and vvittie knight-errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha Translated out of the Spanish., London : Printed by William Stansby, for Ed. Blount and W. Barret, 1612.
"I had rather fill my selfe with a good dish of Gaspachos, then bee subject to the misery of an impertinent Physician, that would kill mee with hunger."

And there the matter rests, except, of course, an etymology meaning "made out of leftovers," suits our style of cooking so much better than even "treasure house."

*Thomas Henry Huxley, Biogenesis and Abiogenesis (1870)

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