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