Food & drink

jerky

Quechua ch'arki, dried meat, became Spanish charqui and the charque of the Brazilian cattle country; English speakers turned it into 'jerked' meat — whence Jamaican jerk — and then jerky, as if it came from the verb jerk.

Weakest linkProbable

The road to American English

From Spanish to Brazilian Portuguese

From English to Jamaican Patois

From American English to Japanese

1550Quechua

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.

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