{"id":22834,"date":"2015-12-14T04:33:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T09:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=22834"},"modified":"2015-12-14T04:47:33","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T09:47:33","slug":"bracchium-to-brezel-to-pretzel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=22834","title":{"rendered":"Bracchium to Brezel to pretzel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I'm in Frankfurt for a week, and a stroll through the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.frankfurt-tourismus.de\/Entdecken-und-Erleben\/Rundgaenge-und-Rundfahrten\/Oeffentliche-Touren\/Weihnachtsmarkt-Rundgang\" target=\"_blank\">Weihnachtsmarkt<\/a> last night with <a href=\"https:\/\/uni-frankfurt1.academia.edu\/CarolineFery\" target=\"_blank\">Caroline F\u00e9ry<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/uni-frankfurt.academia.edu\/ThomasEdeZimmermann\" target=\"_blank\">Ede Zimmermann<\/a> reminded me of something I've wondered about for a long time: Why was German <em>Brezel<\/em> borrowed into English with an initial 'p'?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So I looked it up. The OED's etymology for <em>pretzel<\/em> explains everything:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">A borrowing from German. Etymons: German <em>Bretzel<\/em>.<br \/>\n&lt; German <em>Bretzel<\/em> kind of bread roll, made from a thin length of dough twisted into a knot and coated with brine before baking (now usually <em>Brezel<\/em> ; Old High German as <em>br\u0113zila<\/em> , Middle High German <em>br\u0113zel , pr\u0113zel , pr\u0113zile<\/em> ) &lt; post-classical Latin <em>bracellus<\/em> kind of cake or biscuit (12th cent.), shortened &lt; an unattested post-classical Latin form <em>*brachiatellus<\/em> (compare post-classical Latin <em>bracidelli<\/em> (plural) bakery items (in an undated glossary)) &lt; classical Latin <em>brachi\u0101tus<\/em> , <em>bracchi\u0101tus <\/em>brachiate adj. (compare post-classical Latin <em>braciatus<\/em> (noun) kind of cake eaten on monastic holidays (11th cent.)) + <em>-ellus <\/em>\u00a0suffix; so called on account of the resemblance to folded arms. Compare Italian <em>bracciello<\/em> a kind of cake, simnel, or biscuit (1598 in Florio).<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Compare ( &lt; post-classical Latin *<em>brachiatellus<\/em>) Old High German <em>br\u0113zitella<\/em>, Old Occitan <em>bressadel<\/em>, <em>brassadel<\/em> kind of ring-shaped cake (1480; Occitan <em>bra\u00e7ad\u00e8l<\/em> type of cake made with eggs, cake in the shape of a braid), Italian <em>bracciatello<\/em> kind of ring-shaped cake (second half of the 15th cent., also as <em>bracciatella<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The English form with initial p- probably represents a perception of the unaspirated pronunciation of b- in regional German (south.).<\/p>\n<p>The idea that the 'p' was a misperception of an unaspirated \/b\/ had occurred to us. But the fact that <em>Brezel<\/em>\u00a0(and therefore <em>pretzel<\/em>) comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/morph?l=bracchium&amp;la=la&amp;can=bracchium0&amp;prior=bracchionarium#lexicon\" target=\"_blank\">the Latin word for \"arm\"<\/a>\u00a0is an unexpected pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I'm in Frankfurt for a week, and a stroll through the Weihnachtsmarkt last night with Caroline F\u00e9ry and Ede Zimmermann reminded me of something I've wondered about for a long time: Why was German Brezel borrowed into English with an initial 'p'?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words-words-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22834"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22839,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22834\/revisions\/22839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}