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prettygoodwordcopra (KOP-ruh, KOH-pruh) - n., the dried white flesh of the coconut, from which coconut oil is expressed.
And not, as I somehow had the impression, the dried fibrous husk of a coconut -- no idea where I got that. We got the word in the 1580s from Portuguese, which got it from a Tamil language, most likely Malayalam koppara but possibly Tamil kopparai, which is cognate with Sanskrit kūrpasa, coconut (and its modern descendants such as Hindi khopā), but whether it went Dravidian > Sanskrit or Sanskrit > Dravidian, I can't tell from a brief search.
And that's all the words encountered in Chalet School books I currently have on hand -- back next week with words just as random but more randomly sourced.
---L.
And not, as I somehow had the impression, the dried fibrous husk of a coconut -- no idea where I got that. We got the word in the 1580s from Portuguese, which got it from a Tamil language, most likely Malayalam koppara but possibly Tamil kopparai, which is cognate with Sanskrit kūrpasa, coconut (and its modern descendants such as Hindi khopā), but whether it went Dravidian > Sanskrit or Sanskrit > Dravidian, I can't tell from a brief search.
And that's all the words encountered in Chalet School books I currently have on hand -- back next week with words just as random but more randomly sourced.
---L.
