Where Did We Get That Word? Trivia Quiz

Italian has been very influential on the development of modern English: many words that came into English through French are in fact of Italian origin. In addition, not all Italian loanwords in English are related to food, art, or music.

While the Italian "balcone" originally comes from the Germanic (probably Longobardic) "balcho" (beam), the word was adopted in Italian with the addition of the augmentative suffix "-one". According to another theory, "balcone" comes from the Persian "balkaneh". In any case, it denotes an architectural element of paramount importance in most self-respecting Italian homes. Balcony entered the English language - where it was first attested in the early 17th century - thanks to the influence of Italian Renaissance architecture.

Inspired by a scene in William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet", a Juliet balcony - also known as balconet - is a railing set before a large window, which will look like a balcony when open. The famous balcony at Juliet's house in Verona, however, is a true balcony, protruding from the wall of the building.

By far the most prominent of the few words that English has borrowed from Czech, the Slavic language spoken in the Czech Republic, is robot, denoting a machine (often shaped like a human being) capable of performing a series of complex actions. The origin of this word - very relevant in our times - lies in the Czech word "robota", meaning forced labour. It was first used in its current meaning in the play "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal Robots), written in 1920 by Czech author Karel Čapek - in which the titular robots were human-like machines created to perform repetitive or dangerous tasks. When the play was translated into English in 1922, the word was readily adopted into the language, and is now used in many other languages as well (sometimes with a French pronunciation that omits the final "t").

Another word that may have come from Czech (at least according to some sources) is pistol - which, however, others believe to have derived from the name of the Italian city of Pistoia.

Marmalade comes from "marmelo", the Portuguese word for quince - a rather different fruit from the oranges and other citrus fruit that are now employed to make this preserves. The original "marmelada" involved cooking pieces of quince (which is hardly ever eaten raw, being hard and bitter) with honey or sugar in order to obtain a thick, deep pink paste firm enough to be sliced with a knife. The word "marmelo" in turn comes from the Greek (via Latin) "melimelon", meaning "honey apple". In the late 15th century, both the preserves and the word were introduced into England - though the association of marmalade with citrus fruits developed in late 17th century.

Portuguese has loaned a relatively large number of words to English, though not as many as Spanish or Italian. Many of them, however, originally come from languages spoken in the territories of Africa, Asia and the Americas that were explored or colonized by the Portuguese. Another food-related Portuguese loanword with Greek and Latin roots is molasses (from "melaço", intensifier of "mel", meaning honey).

In the "Paddington Bear" book series by Michael Bond, marmalade sandwiches are the titular character's favourite food.

As vast deposits of mammoth skeletons and frozen mammoth bodies have been found in Siberia, it is not surprising that the word for those huge, hairy relatives of present-day elephants has its roots in one of the languages spoken in the region (which one is still unclear). The original word, "man-ont", probably meant "earth horn" (a reference to the animal's tusks); it was adopted in Russian in the 17th century as "mamont". English borrowed the word from Russian: its first known use as a noun dates from the early years of the 18th century. The "th" spelling may have been influenced by "behemoth", another word denoting a very big creature.

In modern English, mammoth is used mainly as an adjective to describe something of exceedingly large size. This particular use was reportedly introduced in 1802, when President Thomas Jefferson was gifted a giant wheel of cheese by the town of Cheshire in Massachusetts. This extravagant present was dubbed the "Cheshire Mammoth Cheese" by the press - probably inspired by the mastodon skeleton (erroneously called a mammoth at the time) displayed in 1800 at the Philadelphia Museum.

It is estimated that about 25% of English words have a French origin. Many of them entered English in the Middle Ages, following the Norman conquest of 1066, when Anglo-Norman French became the language of the ruling elite. Many other French words, however, were borrowed in more recent times - as is the case of words relating to politics, diplomacy, philosophy and the arts. And then, of course, a great many words of French origin have to do with one of France's biggest claims to fame, its cuisine.

Though puddings are often associated with the cuisines of the British Isles, the word itself (first attested in English in the late 13th century) comes from the French "boudin", which in Middle English became "podynge". Still used in modern French, "boudin" denotes what in English is called black pudding, a kind of sausage made with pig's blood. There are also blood-less variations on this sausage that can be found throughout the French-speaking world. The Canadian French "poutine", denoting a dish of French fries with cheese curds and gravy, is believed to be derived from pudding.

Many German loanwords in English keep their original form, which would have made them a tad too easy to guess. The largest influx of these loanwords came in the 19th century, when literature, philosophy, science and art were flourishing in German-speaking countries. Among weighty terms such as "Zeitgeist", "angst" and "doppelgänger", there are also many words related to food and drink (hamburger being probably the best-known of them), and a few that describe animals, in particular dogs.

One such word is poodle, denoting one of the most popular dog breeds, which comes in three varieties according to size (a fourth is not universally recognized). The breed's name is the anglicized form of the German "Pudel(hund)", derived from the Low German "pudeln", which means to splash - a fitting name for a water dog. Poodles are believed to have originated in Germany, probably in the Middle Ages; the word, however, was first used in English in the 1770s. "Pudel" and "pudeln" are, of course, related to the English puddle.

As in the case of Portuguese, Spanish has often been a vehicle for introducing words from indigenous languages of the Americas into English and other languages: well-known examples are chocolate, tomato and tobacco. More recent Spanish loanwords, such as those related to food and drink, tend to keep the original form. The word alligator, however, is an interesting case of a loanword of purely Spanish origin.

When Spanish explorers landed in Florida in the 16th century, they encountered the local apex predator, the huge reptile to which they gave the name of "el lagarto" - meaning "the lizard"; both these terms come from the Latin "lacerta". The earliest English spellings of the fearsome animal's name, "allagarta" and "alagarto", resemble the original Spanish form. Interestingly, while alligator is also used in other languages to refer to the crocodilian, in Spanish the standard word is "caimán", of Carib origin. Alligator was first attested in English in the late 16th century.

The Dutch language has contributed a considerable amount of words to English - an estimated 1% of its vocabulary. This is not too surprising, given the geographical and linguistic closeness of the two languages, as well as the previous status of both Britain and the Netherlands as naval, trading and colonial powers. Many of the Dutch words that have entered English at some point in history are naval or maritime terms, such as buoy, sloop, deck, and cruise.

Used as both a noun and a verb, cruise comes from the Dutch "kruizen" (to cross, to sail around), derived in turn from the noun "kruis" (cross). The latter word came from the Latin "crux", which has the same meaning. In modern English, cruise often refers to a sea voyage taken for pleasure; it is also used to denote the part of a flight in which an aircraft travels at constant speed. Cruise as a verb entered English in 1651, during the Dutch Golden Age; the noun was first attested at the end of the 17th century.

In Swedish, tungsten means "heavy stone". This rare element, with atomic number 74, was discovered in 1781 by Swedish-German chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who gave it the name tungsten, a word originally describing one of its ores, calcium tungstate (afterwards named scheelite after the scientist). The word tungsten as a name for the new element was borrowed by English, French, Italian and other languages. However, in other languages (such as German) the element is named wolfram (hence the symbol W), which has been interpreted to mean "wolf's froth". The first known use of tungsten in English dates from 1796.

Of the few Swedish loanwords in English, probably the best-known of them are those related to food items (smorgasbord, rutabaga, lingonberry, gravlax) - as well as the term ombudsman, which describes a person who serves as an advocate of customers, patients or employees within an organization.

Vampire has the distinction of being one of very few loanwords from Serbo-Croatian in the English language. Though related words are present in nearly all the languages spoken in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Serbo-Croatian "vampir" is the form that many languages have adopted to denote the blood-drinking undead made famous by Gothic novels and hundreds of movies. Though Bram Stoker's Dracula is described as being originally from Romania, the belief in vampires is at least partly based on a number of rather disturbing events that occurred in the 18th century in Serbia and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

First attested in 1732, vampire in its original meaning came into English from French and German rather than directly from Serbo-Croatian; towards the end of the century, it also became associated with the bats of the genus Desmodus, which feed on blood. The etymology of the Serbo-Croatian word is still unclear.

Another English word of Serbo-Croatian origin is cravat, which comes from "hrvat", meaning "Croatian". Like vampire, it came into English from French and German.