Bibliotheca Polyglotta

Like also Pers kāk, Ar kaʕk probably goes back, via Aram forms, to an Eg word for a type of bread or cake (cf. Copt čaače, čooče, kaake etc. ‘baked loaf, cake’, Demot kʕkʕ(.t) ‘[a type of bread]’).

hist

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cogn

▪ DRS 10 (2012)#KʕK: nHbr kaʕak, JP Syr kaʕkā ‘galette, gateau’, Ar kaḥk, kaʕk ‘craquelins sucrés’, MġrAr kaʕʕak ‘rouler une corde en anneaux’, kaʕwək ‘tortiller et mettre en rond’. Voir aussi KKʕ. – Outside Sem (as suggested by others): ? Eg ʕkk; ? Copt čaače ‘(perhaps a type of cake)’; ? Grk kákeis, kakeîs ‘(type of Egyptian bread)’.
▪ Littmann1924 thinks that Ge Kuchen ‘cake’ and Pers kāk, Aram kaʕkā and Ar kaʕk, all designating some type of bread or cake, must »somehow« be related to each other (cf. also Grk kakeîs and Copt kake) and that this conglomerate »perhaps« goes back to the form kʕkʕ, attested in Eg.

disc

▪ LA explains the meaning as ‘dry bread’ and attributes it to a Pers origin.
▪ Fraenkel1886 thinks the closest cognate from which the Ar word is likely to have been borrowed, is Aram KʕKā, Syr kaʕkā ‘cake’.
▪ Littmann1924 is of the opinion that Ar kaʕk, together with Pers kāk, Aram kaʕkā, Grk kakeîs and Copt kake ‘type of bread or cake’, »somehow« must be related to each other and »perhaps« ultimately go back to the form kʕkʕ, attested in Eg. Details obscure.
▪ Rolland2014 (with Nourai and Corriente): (together with also Pers kāk ‘round, dry and hard bread’) probably from Eg [no details given] via Aram kak, gag [sic!] ‘id.’
▪ Crum1939: 843b juxtaposes Ar kaʕkaẗ and Copt čaače, var. čače, kake (Thebes), čooče S, čače DM ‘baked loaf, cake’. ▪ Youssef2003: from Eg kʕk, Copt kaake, an Egyptian cookie.
▪ Youssef’s “Eg” kʕk and Littmann’s kʕkʕ are neither to be found in ErmanGrapow1921 nor in ThLAeg. But ThLAeg (BBAW) mentions Dem kʕkʕ(.t) (a type of bread)¹ , while ErmanGrapow1921 has Eg ʕqw ‘income; food; bread’ (Copt oeik).
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1. Erichsen, Glossar 561.

west

▪ 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.

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