Etymograph

English

anchovy

Anchovy comes from Spanish anchoa.

  1. Spanishc. 1500–presentanchoa
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1936anchovy

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

Earlier history uncertain.

Lineage

  1. Spanishc. 1500–presentanchoa
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1936anchovy

Earliest quotation: 1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway: “[T]he cooks were laying a refection before him of…”

The story

The term's ultimate origin is unclear; some suggest it may have derived from an unattested Vulgar Latin term *apiuva, from Latin aphyē, apua, from Ancient Greek ἀφύη (aphúē) (which may be formed like Sanskrit अभ्व (ábhva-, “monster”)); others suggest it comes from Basque antxu, anchu (‘dried fish’), from anchuva (‘dry’), if that Basque term is not itself derived from Latin via some intermediary.uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain. None of these hypotheses is satisfactory because of the phonetic irregularities.

Every English word from Spanish anchoa

Today it means

noun Any small saltwater fish of the Engraulidae family, consisting of 160 species in sixteen genera, those of the genus Engraulis being widely sold as food.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Spanish anchoa / anchovy

Shirt and support for this word