Tess from southeastern Pennsylvania wonders about the origins of coleslaw. It comes from Dutch koolsla, meaning simply “cabbage salad.” The cole part shares its root with kale, the cauli in cauliflower, and the kohl in kohlrabi. All these words go back to the Latin caulis, “a hollow stem or stalk.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Kale, Kohl, Cole, and Cauli”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Tess. I’m calling from southeastern Pennsylvania, and I was just wondering about the word coleslaw.
And what were you wondering about the word coleslaw?
I guess there’s just so many cabbage-based dishes in so many cultures, and the one that I’m most used to is coleslaw.
And I was kind of wondering what the origin of that word is.
You know, is it coleslaw?
Yeah, that’s hard to parse, right?
It is.
Yeah, because there’s not many other words that on the surface look the same or like they share roots.
But we’re going to fix that for you.
We’ve got a few words that are surprisingly connected to it.
So coleslaw comes to English from Dutch.
There’s a word coleslaw, which literally sounds the same, but it’s spelled differently.
K-double-O-L-S-L-A, which means cabbage salad.
It’s as simple as that.
But that coal part, the C-O-L-E in English, is the interesting part of this because it’s the same root as the word kale, K-L-E, and the cauli in cauliflower.
And they’re all brassicas.
And I believe that they all originally come from the same plant anyway.
They’re just, you know, bred differently over time.
So we have that same root.
And kohlrabi, the K-O-H-L and kohlrabi, it’s the same word.
It all goes back to Latin, to this word that means hollow stem or stalk.
Kohlis, C-A-U-L-I-S.
Do you know when we started calling kohlsla kohlsla?
A long time ago, I guess, right?
A long time ago, yeah.
It’s part of the Dutch heritage.
We don’t actually have that many words that are pure, straight-up Dutch in English.
And we’re looking at it in Dutch as early as the 1700s.
And then the Dutch experience in the United States brought it here in the late 18th century.
Wow.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, it’s cool, right?
Yeah.
If you get a chance, it’s not linguistic, but look into all the breeding done over the many centuries to get that one plant to turn into all these different vegetables, all these brassicas, as they’re known as a group.
And it is incredibly interesting.
It is so interesting.
Some of them are the same plant, just picked at a different time of the growth cycle.
It’s just astonishingly interesting what has happened here with this one plant.
Yeah, I’ll definitely look into it.
It’s one of my favorite foods.
Oh, I love it with a little caraway seed.
For some reason, a vinegar-based coleslaw with caraway seed.
I don’t know why I love that so much, but I love it.
Yeah, and I do like the idea of cold, you know, nicely chilled, you know,
With a fish sandwich or something.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much, Tess.
We appreciate the call.
You call us again sometime, all right?
Thank you so much.
I’m a huge fan.
Aw, thank you.
Glad to have you.
Take care. Bye-bye.
All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye, Tess.
Well, astonish us with a question about language.
