1463: abracadabra Dec 13, 2018

Like any good magician might, the etymology of 'abracadabra' has not revealed itself. There were for a long time a lot of folk etymologies as to where it derived, and in particular that it came from a Semitic root meaning something along the lines of "I create the word", but this has since been many-times debunked. The word is actually from Latin, and was used in incantations starting in the 2nd century, usually for medicinal practices, and likely started from Greek. The word is also found in English later, again to indicate sickness, and only recently did it gain the connotations of any kind of illusion or spell. If you liked this, check out the post about 'hocus-pocus'.