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