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kefir / kumiss
Mar. 8th, 2016 07:55 amkefir (KEH-feer) - n., a fermented drink made from cow's or sometimes goat's or sheep's milk from the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.
kumiss (KOO-mis) - n., a fermented drink made from mare's or sometimes camel's or cow's milk from the Central Asian steppes.
Both are similar to very liquid yogurt. Kefir originated in the north Caucasus Mountains, while kumiss (also spelled kumis, koumiss, and several other variations) is attested by Herodotus as being produced by the Scythians, and there are possible traces of it in archaeological sites in Kazakhstan dating to the 4th millennium BCE. We adopted both words via Russian: kefir in the 1880s, from one of the north Caucasian languages, and kumiss in the 1590s (either directly or via French), from a Turkic language, from Syro-Aramaic khamets, sour/fermented, spread under Nestorian influence across central Asia in the 8th/9th centuries CE.
---L.
kumiss (KOO-mis) - n., a fermented drink made from mare's or sometimes camel's or cow's milk from the Central Asian steppes.
Both are similar to very liquid yogurt. Kefir originated in the north Caucasus Mountains, while kumiss (also spelled kumis, koumiss, and several other variations) is attested by Herodotus as being produced by the Scythians, and there are possible traces of it in archaeological sites in Kazakhstan dating to the 4th millennium BCE. We adopted both words via Russian: kefir in the 1880s, from one of the north Caucasian languages, and kumiss in the 1590s (either directly or via French), from a Turkic language, from Syro-Aramaic khamets, sour/fermented, spread under Nestorian influence across central Asia in the 8th/9th centuries CE.
---L.
