said to
have been tabaco, but to have meant not the plant (According to William
Barclay, "Nepenthes, or the Virtue of Tobacco", Edinburgh, 1614, "the
countrey which God hath honoured and blessed with this happie and holy
herbe doth call it in their native language 'Petum'.") but the pipe
in which it was smoked. It thus illustrates a frequent feature of
borrowing--that the word is not borrowed in its proper signification,
but in some sense closely allied thereto, which a foreigner,
understanding the 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 "sati", "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-appel), while dialectically in German
a form "Grumbire" appears, which is a corruption of "Grund-birne",
"ground pear". (Kluge "Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache"
(Strassburg), s.v. "Kartoffel".) 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 Englis