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prettygoodwordTheme week: loan words from other languages that have altered meanings in English.
hibachi - n., a small charcoal brazier used for outdoor grilling.
Borrowed from Japanese, where it means a heating brazier -- the cooking brazier is called a shichirin. It's possible this was a marketing decision rather than a mistake, because hibachi was easier to pronounce. Used in English since the early 1860s, from Japanese hibachi, from hi, fire + hachi, bowl -- which in turn is from Middle Chinese pat or puat, a monk's begging bowl, from either Pali patta or directly from its root Sanskrit pātra, cup, bowl, from IndoEuropean root *pō(i).
---L.
hibachi - n., a small charcoal brazier used for outdoor grilling.
Borrowed from Japanese, where it means a heating brazier -- the cooking brazier is called a shichirin. It's possible this was a marketing decision rather than a mistake, because hibachi was easier to pronounce. Used in English since the early 1860s, from Japanese hibachi, from hi, fire + hachi, bowl -- which in turn is from Middle Chinese pat or puat, a monk's begging bowl, from either Pali patta or directly from its root Sanskrit pātra, cup, bowl, from IndoEuropean root *pō(i).
---L.
