Myths & disputes

jewel

Jewel came from Anglo-French juel, Old French jouel 'ornament, gift', which is probably a diminutive built on Latin iocus 'game, jest', the source of joke; Old French had it by the 12th century and English by the late 13th.

Weakest linkPossible

The story you may have heard

The extracted draft started the word in Arabic jawhar 'gem, jewel'. That rests on one 19th-century glossary (Pihan, 1866) and a likeness of sound; Etymonline, Merriam-Webster and the French dictionaries trace jouel to Latin iocus (or gaudium), with no Arabic stage.

The road to English

From Old French to Middle French

200 BCELatin

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

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