English
Pablum
Pablum may come from Latin pābulum ‘fodder for animals’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEpābulum‘fodder for animals’uncertain
- Englishearliest quotation 1951Pablum
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed
Earlier history uncertain.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEpābulum‘fodder for animals’uncertain
- Englishearliest quotation 1951Pablum
Earliest quotation: 1951, Now Watch Baby’s Progress on All Four! [advertisement]: “Now your baby is even luckier! He'll enjoy new…”
The story
The name of a food supplement for malnourished infants developed in 1931 by the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Mead Johnson & Company, probably a shortening of Latin pābulum (‘fodder for animals; food, nourishment’), from pā(scō) (‘to feed, nourish; to drive to pasture; to support; to tend’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (‘to protect, ward; to shepherd’)) + -bulum (suffix denoting an instrument) (from Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom (a variant of *-trom (suffix denoting an instrument or tool))), or directly from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂-dʰlom (from *peh₂- + *-dʰlom). The name was trademarked in the United States in 1932.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- ‘to protect, to ward’
food, company, father, pain, feed, pope, pattern, foster, apparent, fur, companion, pastor, penetration, papa, patriot, patron, fodder, perpetrator, fad, pasture, forage, accompaniment, paternal, paternity, ayr, padre, perpetrate, patrician, panini, patrimony, père, pater, pav, compere, pantaloons, pannier, 60 more
Today it means
name A type of cereal for infants made from cornmeal, oat, and wheat.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Latin pābulum / Pablum