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Aug. 1st, 2012 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordcascabel (KAS-kuh-bel) - n., the round knob on the breech end of a muzzle-loading cannon; a type of round, hot chili pepper grown in central Mexico.
The Wikipedia article on the first sense has a diagram, and on the second sense, photos. Both senses are from Spanish, the first being borrowed first, in the 1630s, from cascabel, a small round bell (and in South America, also a rattle), from Old Provençal cascavel, from Vulgar Latin *cascābellus, after which the trail gets muddled, but suggestions for the ultimate Latin root include quassāre, to shatter, frequentative of quatere, to shake, and caccabus, pot + diminutive suffix -ellus. (It also happens to be the name of a ghost town just across the mountains from here, named after yet another Mexican Spanish sense, a type of rattlesnake.) Oh, as for why a knob on the end of a cannon? -- to tie ropes to, to hold back the recoil.
---L.
The Wikipedia article on the first sense has a diagram, and on the second sense, photos. Both senses are from Spanish, the first being borrowed first, in the 1630s, from cascabel, a small round bell (and in South America, also a rattle), from Old Provençal cascavel, from Vulgar Latin *cascābellus, after which the trail gets muddled, but suggestions for the ultimate Latin root include quassāre, to shatter, frequentative of quatere, to shake, and caccabus, pot + diminutive suffix -ellus. (It also happens to be the name of a ghost town just across the mountains from here, named after yet another Mexican Spanish sense, a type of rattlesnake.) Oh, as for why a knob on the end of a cannon? -- to tie ropes to, to hold back the recoil.
---L.
