2680: The Mysterious Origins of Rice Apr 22, 2024

The word “rice” is a wanderwort meaning that is shared across many languages that aren’t related to each other, in this case many Semitic, Indo-European, Caucasian, and Turkic languages. Like a lot of old wanderworts, including ‘wine’ (LINK), it is not entirely clear where ‘rice’ comes from. Most likely, it is from a South Indian, non-Indo-European language, but words clearly from this root are seen from India to Persia, and the Middle East to Western Europe. One theory holds that it entered Sanskrit through some Dravidian source before entering languages to the west. Another holds that the word first entered Semitic languages like the Hebrew ⁧אורז⁩ (órez) ultimately from Old Tamil arici; Tamil is also a Dravidian language.