The use of this weapon was prohibited by statute in 1406, hence the early disappearance of the word.
Another "Zulu" word which has travelled a long way is kraal. This is a contracted Dutch form from Port. curral, a sheepfold (cf. Span. corral, a pen, enclosure). Both assegai and kraal were taken to South East Africa by the Portuguese and then adopted by the Boers and Kafirs.[22] Sjambok occurs in 17th-century accounts of India in the form chawbuck. It is a Persian word, spelt chabouk by Moore, in Lalla Rookh. It was adopted by the Portuguese as chabuco, "in the Portuguese India, a whip or scourge"[23] (Vieyra, Port. Dict., 1794). Fetish, an African idol, first occurs in the records of the early navigators, collected and published by Hakluyt and Purchas. It is the Port. feitiço, Lat. factitius, artificial, applied by the Portuguese explorers to the graven images of the heathen. The corresponding Old Fr. faitis is rather a complimentary adjective, and everyone remembers the lady in Chaucer who spoke French fairly and fetousli. Palaver, also a travellers' word from the African coast, is Port. palavra, word, speech, Greco-Lat. parabola. It is thus a doublet of parole and parable, and is related to parley. Ayah, an Indian nurse, is Port. aia, nurse, of unknown origin. Caste is Port. casta, pure, and a doublet of chaste. Tank, an Anglo-Indian word of which the meaning has narrowed in this country, is Port. tanque, a pool or cistern, Lat. stagnum, whence Old Fr. estang (étang) and provincial Eng. stank, a dam, or a pond banked round. Cobra is the Portuguese for snake, cognate with Fr. couleuvre, Lat. coluber (see p. [7]). We use it as an abbreviation for cobra de capello, hooded snake, the second part of which is identical with Fr. chapeau and cognate with cape, chapel (p. [152]), chaplet, a garland, and chaperon, a "protecting" hood. From still further afield than India comes joss, a Chinese god, a corruption of Port. deos, Lat. deus. Even mandarin comes from Portuguese, and not Chinese, but it is an Eastern word, ultimately of Sanskrit origin.
GORILLA—SILK
The word gorilla is perhaps African, but more than two thousand years separate its first appearance from its present use. In the 5th or 6th century, B.C., a Carthaginian navigator named Hanno sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules along the west coast of Africa. He probably followed very much the same route as Sir Richard Dalyngridge and Saxon Hugh when they voyaged with Witta the Viking. He wrote in Punic a record of his adventures, which was received with the incredulity usually accorded to travellers' tales. Among the wonders he encountered were some hairy savages called gorillas. His work was translated into Greek and later on into several European languages, so that the word became familiar to naturalists. In 1847 it was applied to the giant ape, which had recently been described by explorers.
The origin of the word silk is a curious problem. It is usually explained as from Greco-Lat. sericum, a name derived from an Eastern people called the Seres, presumably the Chinese. It appears in Anglo-Saxon as seolc. Now, at that early period, words of Latin origin came to us by the overland route and left traces of their passage. But all the Romance languages use for silk a name derived from Lat. sæta, bristle, and this name has penetrated even into German (Seide) and Dutch (zijde). The derivatives of sericum stand for another material, serge. Nor can it be assumed that the r of the Latin word would have become in English always l and never r. There are races which cannot sound the letter r, but we are not one of them. As the word silk is found also in Old Norse, Swedish, Danish, and Old Slavonian, the natural inference is that it must have reached us along the north of Europe, and, if derived from sericum, it must, in the course of its travels, have passed through a dialect which had no r.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] This includes Flemish, spoken in a large part of Belgium and in the North East of France.
[17] Haversack, oat-sack, comes through French from German.
[18] This applies also to some of the clan names, e.g., Macpherson, son of the parson, Macnab, son of the abbot.
[19] My own conviction is that it is identical with Dan. dirik, dirk, a pick-lock. See Dietrich (p. [42]). An implement used for opening an enemy may well have been named in this way. Cf. Du. opsteeker (up sticker), "a pick-lock, a great knife, or a dagger" (Sewel, 1727).