2949: Cane, Cannon, and Canyon Jan 17, 2025

Looking at words like 'cane,' 'cannon,' and 'can,' one can begin to discern a wider network of doublets, all going back to the same root based on the sense of being tubes. At first glance, these, another with others like ‘channel’, ‘canal’ and ‘canyon’ which are also tubes, though uncovered, are related through Romantic sources, arriving to English through Spanish, French, and Latin, all ultimately from the Latin ‘canna’ meaning ‘reed’, and eventually ‘pipe’ in Old Italian. This is not where the word begins however, as Latin adopted it from Ancient Greek, κάννα (kánna) also ‘reed’, which itself is not entirely clear where it came from. It’s almost certain that it is from a Semitic source, like the Hebrew קנה (qané). 

Read more about how this is related to ‘caramel’.