The growth of Language 525 



language with difficulty, might readily mistake for the real meaning. 

 Thus the Hindu practice of burning a wife upon the funeral pyre 

 of her husband is called in English suttee, this word being in fact but 

 the phonetic spelling of the Sanskrit satl, " a virtuous woman," and 

 passing into its English meaning because formerly the practice of self- 

 immolation by a wife was regarded as the highest virtue. 



The name of the potato exhibits greater variety. The English 

 name was borrowed from the Spanish patata, which was itself 

 borrowed from a native word for the yam in the dialect of Hayti. 

 The potato appeared early in Italy, for the mariners of Genoa actively 

 followed the footsteps of their countryman Columbus in exploring 

 America. In Italian generally the form patata has survived. The 

 tubers, however, also suggested a resemblance to truffles, so that the 

 Italian word tartufolo, a diminutive of the Italian modification of 

 the Latin terrae tuber was applied to them. In the language of the 

 Rhaetian Alps this word appears as tartufel. From there it seems 

 to have passed into Germany where potatoes were not cultivated 

 extensively till the eighteenth century, and tartufel has in later 

 times through some popular etymology been metamorphosed into 

 Kartoffel. In France the shape of the tubers suggested the name 

 of earth-apple (pomme de terre\ a name also adopted in Dutch 

 (aard-appef), while dialectically in German a form Grumbire appears, 

 which is a corruption of Grwnd-birne, ' ground pear 1 ." Here half the 

 languages have adopted the original American word for an allied 

 plant, while others have adopted a name originating in some more 

 or less fanciful resemblance discovered in the tubers; the Germans 

 alone in Western Europe, failing to see any meaning in their borrowed 

 name, have modified it almost beyond recognition. To this English 

 supplies an exact parallel in parsnep which, though representing 

 the Latin pastinaca through the Old French pastenaque, was first 

 assimilated in the last syllable to the nep of turnep (pasneppe in 

 Elizabethan English), and later had an r introduced into the first 

 syllable, apparently on the analogy of parsley. 



The turkey on the other hand seems never to be found with its 

 original American name. In England, as the name implies, the 

 turkey cock was regarded as having come from the land of the Turks. 

 The bird no doubt spread over Europe from the Italian seaports. 

 The mistake, therefore, was not unnatural, seeing that these towns 

 conducted a great trade with the Levant, while the fact that America 

 when first discovered was identified with India helped to increase 

 the confusion. Thus in French the coq dlnde was abbreviated to 

 (KInde much as turkey cock was to turkey ; the next stage was to 

 identify dinde as a feminine word and create a new dindon on the 

 analogy of chapon as the masculine. In Italian the name gatto 



1 Kluge, Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache (Strassburg), s.v. Kartoffel. 



