Spanish Word of the Day
Wednesday, November 13, 2013 Yesterday's Word - Previous Words - Help choclo, noun
corn, sweet corn The languages spoken in Latin America have given many words to Spanish, as we've seen on other occasions. Choclo, the word used to denote both the cereal plant corn, and the kernels, sweetcorn, is a version of the word choccllo. Chocclo is from Quechua, the language of the Inca empire and still spoken today.
In the Andean region dozens of varieties of choclo are produced, some with coloured grains, rather than the uniform yellow stuff you get out of tins. El choclo is a staple food, and sometimes a delicacy, throughout much of Latin America.
The other word for corn, maíz, is first recorded in Spanish in Christopher Columbus's diary. It too comes from an indigenous American language, Taino, which was once spoken in the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.
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