entry
chocolates
/ˈtʃɑːkələts/Plural of chocolate; also verbs meaning coats in chocolate
From Nahuatl via Mexican Spanish chocolate (cocoa beverage or chocolate).
Word Ancestry
This word began life as a drink before it became a candy aisle celebrity. In the 1500s, Spanish speakers in Mexico picked up Nahuatl chocolate and carried it back across the Atlantic, where people like Pepys were happily sipping it in London coffeehouses by the 1660s. The older, darker debate is whether the source was chocola-tl or cacahua-tl, which is a neat reminder that etymology can be part archaeology, part detective story. Then English did what English loves to do: turned a drink into a flavor, a flavor into a color, and a color into a box of treats. So when you say chocolates, you’re really hearing a tiny colonial shipping route and a sweet little semantic upgrade in one word.
The Story
This word began life as a drink before it became a candy aisle celebrity. In the 1500s, Spanish speakers in Mexico picked up Nahuatl chocolate and carried it back across the Atlantic, where people like Pepys were happily sipping it in London coffeehouses by the 1660s. The older, darker debate is whether the source was chocola-tl or cacahua-tl, which is a neat reminder that etymology can be part archaeology, part detective story. Then English did what English loves to do: turned a drink into a flavor, a flavor into a color, and a color into a box of treats. So when you say chocolates, you’re really hearing a tiny colonial shipping route and a sweet little semantic upgrade in one word.
Kin & Kindred
From 'chocolate'·cocoa beverage or chocolate
Derived Terms
English words from this root