▪ DUDEN1963, Kluge2002, Huehnergard2011, DeCaprona2013,
EtymOnline: The same Akk
qanû to which Ar
qanāẗ is akin, was taken into Grk as
kánna ‘pipe, reed’. The latter produced also the derivative Grk
kánistron (also
kánystron,
kánastron) ‘basket made from reed’, which we find again in Lat
canistrum ‘wicker basket (for bread, fruit, flowers, etc.)’ (> Engl
canister ‘
lC15 basket;
1711 metal receptacle’; Ital
canestro ‘basket’ > Ge
Kanister ‘
C18 basket,
C19 canister’;
1
Ge
Knaster, a word that seems to have taken the modern meaning of ‘low-quality tobacco’ in
C18 student circles, was originally, when it entered Ge in c
1700, probably a word for ‘fine tobacco’ shipped in a small reed basket, probably came in via Span
canastro, from Grk
kánastron ‘basket made of reed’ – Kluge2002). — Either directly from the Sem source or a modification of the same Grk
kánna ‘pipe, reed’ is also Grk
kanṓn ‘any straight rod; (later:) measure, rule; (finally, in the papyri of
C4 and
C5) assessment for taxation; imperial taxes; tariff’, cf. Ar ↗
qānūn. — Grk
kánna ‘reed; pipe’ was taken into Lat as
canna, which became the main basis for further development and borrowing. One of the earliest such occasions may be the shift of meaning in lLat from
canna ‘reed; pipe’ to ‘container, vessel’, inspired perhaps by a type, in Roman pottery, of cans that had a pipe (cf. also Ar ↗
qannīnaẗ). lLat
canna ‘container, vessel’ may then have passed into Germ-speaking regions, for which some etymologists reconstruct a protoGerm *
kanna as the source of what now is Engl
can (oEngl
canne ‘a cup, container’), Ge
Kanne (
C11 oHGe
channa, mHGe
kanne), etc. (cf. oSax oNo Swed
kanna, mDutch
kanne, Dutch
kan).
2
— In its original form and meaning, Lat
canna ‘reed, cane’ also passed into Span as
cano ‘tube’, which produced the augmentative (Span)
cañon ‘pipe, tube; deep hollow, gorge’ that in MexSpan was extended in meaning to encompass also a ‘narrow valley between cliffs’.
1
3
The dimin. formation Fr
cannelle ‘little pipe’ from Fr
canne is the origin of the modNo
kanel ‘cinnamon’ (so called after the cinnamon sticks).
4
— The dimin. formation Lat
cannula ‘small reed or pipe’, from Lat
canna ‘reed, pipe’, lives on in Fr
canule, which gave (
C19) Ge
Kanüle ‘cannula’ – Kluge2002. Engl
cannula,
canula, is attested already in the
1680 s in the modern surgical sense –
EtymOnline. — Lat
canna also lived on in Ital
canna ‘reed; pipe, tube’ where an augmentative formation gave Ital
cannone ‘large tube, barrel’. This
cannone was taken, in
C16 (Kluge2002), into Ge as
Kanone, but already two centuries earlier (
C14) into oFr as
canon, hence Anglo-Fr
canon and, finally (c
1400), Engl
cannon ‘tube for projectiles’. The meaning ‘large ordnance piece’, the main modern sense, is from
1520 s –
EtymOnline. — Not an augmentative but a diminutive of Ital
canna is Ital
cannello ‘small thin tube, pipe’. Adding again the augmentative suffix
‑one to the diminutive in
‑ello, we get Ital
cannellone ‘big thick tube, pipe’, the pl. of which,
cannelloni, is used to designate a form of stuffed pasta. — Another group of European words can be traced back to the adj. formation, from Lat
canna, of Lat
canālis ‘formed like a pipe’ which, when used as noun, meant ‘water pipe, groove, channel’. In the latter meaning, the word was taken into Ital as
canale, which in turn was loaned (in
C15) into Ge as
Kanal ‘canal, channel’ – DUDEN1963, Kluge2002. Engl
canal came in (
eC15) via Fr
canal,
chanel ‘water channel, tube, pipe, gutter’ (
C12). Originally in Engl ‘a pipe for liquid’, its sense was transferred by the
1670 s to ‘artificial waterway’ –
EtymOnline. Also from Fr
chanel ‘bed of a waterway; tube, pipe, gutter’ is Engl
channel (
eC14) ‘bed of running water’, from oFr, from Lat
canalis ‘groove, channel, waterpipe’.
channel was given a broader, figurative sense (of ‘information, commerce, etc.’) in the
1530 s; the meaning ‘circuit for telegraph communication’ (
1848) probably led to that of ‘band of frequency for radio or TV signals’ (
1928) –
EtymOnline.