▪ Rolland2014, like before him Littmann1924, suggests that also Engl
cake (Littmann: Ge
Kuchen) is from the same old Eg source as Ar
kaʕk. Dictionaries of modern Eur languages keep silent about a possible Oriental connection:
▪
EtymOnline, for example, says that Engl
cake (
eC13; until eC15 meaning ‘flat, round loaf of bread’) is from oNor
kaka ‘cake’, from WGerm *
kōkōn‑. Earlier theories that had believed the word to be related to Lat
coquere ‘to cook’ were not to be upheld any longer. The oNor etymon is given in Kluge2002, too, who also states that the word’s history before oNor is obscure. Some believe it is s.th. like children’s language; others hold that the oNor form is borrowed from a Romance language and thus goes back to eRom *
coca, which is from Lat
cochlea ‘snail shell’ (from Grk
kóχlias ‘snail; screw’ etc., from
kóχlos ‘spiral shell’, perhaps related to
kónχos ‘mussel, conch’), so that a ‘cake’ ultimately would be a piece of dough formed like a snail or a spiral shell. A similar idea, however, seems also to lie in the Oriental words mentioned in the DISC section: most of them designate a
round bread/cake, often in the form of a spiral shell; cf. also the notion of ‘rolling’ as attested in the MġrAr forms.