Someone on The Kitchen Cabinet remarked that sambusa, as samosa is known in Somalia, came from Arabic. Perhaps it does, for the Hindi samosa, which we have borrowed for the fried triangles, comes from Persian sambose.
Loan words weave in and out of the routes of trade and cultural conquest between the Near East and the East Indies.
Far more mysterious is haggis. Before the 18th century, this dish was not regarded as particularly Scottish. Thomas Hobbes did not think it ridiculous to use it in a translation of the Odyssey: ‘Antinous a haggas brought, fill’d up / With fat and blood’, to be enjoyed with bread and wine. But where did haggis come from?
The Oxford English Dictionary stoutly declares: ‘Derivation unknown.’ Some suggest it’s from French hachis, ‘hash’, but the OED says this has ‘apparently no basis of fact’.
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