Lesson 3 Stories of English Words and Expressions
English Words of Foreign Origin
English has often borrowed words from other cultures or ____
Here are some ____ with interesting stories.
shampoo
The word shampoo comes ____ the Hindi word chāmpo, which means “to press.”
____ India, the word was used for a head massage.
British traders in India experienced a ____ with a head massage and introduced it to Britain in the 18th century.
The meaning of the word shampoo changed a few times after it first entered ____ around 1762.
In the 19th century, shampoo got its present meaning ____ “washing the hair.”
____ after that, the word began to be also used for a special soap for the hair.
robot
The word robot comes from the play R.U.R., which was ____ in 1920 by a Czech writer Karel Čapek.
In the play, robots ____ machines that look like humans.
They are designed to work ____ humans and are produced in a factory.
It is interesting that the idea of using the word robot didn’t come from ____ Čapek himself.
He ____ called the machines in his play labori from the Latin word for “work.”
However, his brother suggested roboti, ____ means “slave workers” in Czech.
Karel Čapek liked the idea and decided to ____ the word roboti.
In 1938, the play was made into a science fiction show on television in ____
hurricane
The word hurricane comes ____ the Spanish word huracán, which originates from the name of a Mayan god.
In the ____ creation myth, Huracán is the weather god of wind, storm, and fire, and he is one of the three gods who created humans.
____ the first humans angered the gods, so Huracán caused a great flood.
The first Spanish contact with the Mayan ____ was in 1517.
Spanish explorers who were ____ through the Caribbean experienced a hurricane and picked up the word for it from the people in the area.
In English, one of the early uses of hurricane was ____ a play by Shakespeare in 1608.
hamburger
The word hamburger originally comes from Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest ____
Hamburger means “people ____ things from Hamburg” in German.
The origin of the first hamburger ____ not clear.
However, it is believed that the hamburger was invented in a small town in ____ USA, sometime between 1885 and 1904.
A cook placed ____ Hamburg-style steak between two slices of bread, and people started to call such food a hamburger.