Hello, my dear followers! It’s Tuesday, and, as usual, it’s time for another word history to come your way!
Today’s word is “kitchen”.
Where I come from, in the Mediterranean, the kitchen is a temple. It’s one of the most sacred spaces in the house. It’s where food is prepared and brought to the table.
The source of all deliciousness.
Every Italian person has fond memories of their grandmothers lovingly crafting some masterpiece in that holiest of sanctums.
The word “kitchen” and its sibling “cook” are a splendid example of two related words which have diverged so much in sound that it’s hard to tell they’re cognates.
“Kitchen” comes from Old English “cycene”, itself from Proto-Germanic *kokina. This word was probably a very early loanword directly from Latin, as the first Germanic tribes were nomadic and did not have kitchens. In Latin, it is “coquina”, coming from “coquus”, the etymology of the English word “cook”!
They all come from the PIE root *pekw-, ‘to cook, to prepare’.