quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- botulism
- botulism: [19] The fact that Latin botulus was used metaphorically for ‘intestine’ is in this case just a red herring; its principal meaning was ‘sausage’, and it was the discovery of the foodpoisoning germ in cooked meats, such assausages, which led to the term botulism. Early work on unmasking the bacterium responsible (now known as Clostridium botulinum) was done in Germany, and at first the German form of the word, botulismus, was used in English, but by the late 1880s we find the naturalized botulism fairly well established.
- bowel
- bowel: [13] Bowel comes via Old French buel or bouel from Latin botellus ‘small intestine, sausage’, a diminutive form of botulus ‘sausage’. The term botulism ‘food poisoning’ was coined on the basis that the toxin responsible for it was originally found in sausages and other preserved meats.
=> botulism - pudding
- pudding: [13] The original puddings were sausages – whose present-day survivor is the black pudding. They were encased in the intestines or stomachs of animals, and it was this casing that provided the spring-board for the word’s subsequent development in meaning. It came to be applied to any food cooked in a bag (hence the cannon-ball shape of the traditional Christmas pudding).
Such dishes could be savoury (like today’s steak-and-kidney pudding) or sweet, but it was not until the 20th century that pudding came to be used specifically for the ‘sweet course of a meal’. The word comes via Old French boudin from Vulgar Latin *botellīnus, a diminutive form of Latin botellus ‘sausage’ (source of English botulism).
=> botulism - sausage
- sausage: [15] A sausage is etymologically a dish made by ‘salting’. The word comes via Old Northern French saussiche from late Latin salsīcia, a noun use of the neuter plural of salsīcius ‘made by salting’. This in turn was based on Latin salsus ‘salted’, a derivative of sāl ‘salt’. The earliest record of the use of sausage dog for ‘dachshund’ (an allusion to its cylindrical shape, and also perhaps to the Germans’ supposed liking for sausages) dates from the late 1930s.
=> salt - hot dog
- also hotdog, "sausage on a split roll," c. 1890, popularized by cartoonist T.A. Dorgan. It is said to echo a 19c. suspicion (occasionally justified) that sausages contained dog meat. Meaning "someone particularly skilled or excellent" (with overtones of showing off) is from 1896. Connection between the two senses, if any, is unclear. Hot dog! as an exclamation of approval was in use by 1906.