{"id":22939,"date":"2023-06-21T14:56:43","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T14:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22939"},"modified":"2023-06-21T14:56:44","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T14:56:44","slug":"croissants-and-cereal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22939","title":{"rendered":"Croissants and Cereal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What links the words croissant and cereal, apart from them often being eaten for breakfast?<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/photographerglen\/5957346052\/in\/photolist-a5qXqY-7bFUSx-7KPL9u-anYtho-Aa2YZ-HC1Q1-6UVhja-miZJkt-9d6Ftx-j1FSLU-zJMuL4-AFEQHp-mX2f8F-8uMRoW-ta9YJU-2oct6Vm-RsCYGU-aYRSvD-brcgva-mJtMn2-7VtQrg-LepW5x-KhAhcW-dCGyGT-KhAh2A-2iBttoF-J8tmr-2oob67g-5vpba6-2nJhVd5-7VtQNZ-2iBtuST-b274Tg-fcUWv-5pZARc-RsSf5f-dPcrJr-eF4DZk-27wSKim-f88B4h-dPcrHz-nvCaFG-2kGXZ4K-2hK287g-c1Mu6Y-Vd3NQg-audMTv-6oNzJY-2oaadfr-mMVeht\" title=\"Croissant\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/6146\/5957346052_1fa668ae5b_z.jpg\" alt=\"Croissant\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>A <strong>croissant<\/strong> is a flaky roll or pastry in a form of a crescent. Although they&#8217;re associated with France, they&#8217;re based on the Viennese <strong>kipferl<\/strong>, a crescent-shaped pastry dating back to at least the 13th century. They became popular in France after August Zang, an Austrian artillery officer, set up a Viennese bakery in Paris in 1839 which sold Viennese pastries, including the kipferl. Other bakers copied this and created the croissant [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Croissant\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The word <strong>croissant<\/strong> comes from French, and is the present participle of the verb <strong>cro\u00eetre<\/strong> (to increase, grow), from the Old French <em>creistre<\/em> (to grow), from the Latin <em>cr\u0113sc\u014d<\/em> (I grow, from the Proto-Indo-European root <em>*\u1e31er-<\/em> (to grow, become bigger) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/croissant#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The word <strong>cereal<\/strong> comes from the same roots, via the French <strong>c\u00e9r\u00e9ale<\/strong> (cereal), the Latin <em>Cerealis<\/em> (of or relating to Ceres), from <strong>Ceres<\/strong> (Roman goddess of agriculture), from the Proto-Indo-European root <em>*\u1e31er-<\/em> (to grow, become bigger) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/cereal#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Other words from the same roots include <strong>create<\/strong>, <strong>creature<\/strong>, <strong>crecent<\/strong>, <strong>crew<\/strong>, <strong>increase<\/strong> and <strong>sincere<\/strong> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Category:English_terms_derived_from_the_Proto-Indo-European_root_*%E1%B8%B1er-_(grow)\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sincere?<\/strong> That comes from the Middle French <em>sincere<\/em> (sincere), from the Latin <em>sincerus<\/em> (genuine), from the Proto-Indo-European roots <em>*sem-<\/em> (together) and <em>*\u1e31er-<\/em> (to grow). So you could say that being sincere involves growing together, perhaps. [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/sincere#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t come from the Latin <em>sine<\/em> (without) and <em>cera<\/em> (wax). That is a popular folk etymology. One story is that dishonest Roman and Greek sculptors covered flaws in their work with wax. A sculpture &#8220;without wax&#8221; was therefore an honest or sincere one. Another story is that Greek sculptors made fake marble statues out of wax to offer as tribute to their Roman conquerors [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sincerity#Controversy\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What links the words croissant and cereal, apart from them often being eaten for breakfast? A croissant is a flaky roll or pastry in a form of a crescent. Although they&#8217;re associated with France, they&#8217;re based on the Viennese kipferl, a crescent-shaped pastry dating back to at least the 13th century. They became popular in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,15,34,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-latin","category-old-french","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22939"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22943,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22939\/revisions\/22943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}