2679: How Cereal is Named for a Deity Apr 21, 2024

The word ‘cereal’ comes from the Roman deity Ceres, thought of as goddess of agriculture. Given the sense of cereal as a prepared breakfast dish is quite modern, it just referred to any sort of grain. Less obviously, the same etymological root also led to the word ‘sincere’ once meaning ‘pure’, wrongly described as coming from *sine cerae (without wax) but this is unattested. Rather, it, and also the word ‘crescent’ come from this same word that means ‘to grow’, and in the case of ‘sincere’ probably had the sense more of ‘raw; unadulterated’. In the case of ‘crescent’, the verb ‘crēscere’ meaning ‘to arise’, hence the association with a crescent moon.