A Handbook of the English Language

by R. G. Latham

Tungusian or some similar Siberian language.—Mammoth, the bones of which are chiefly from the banks of the Lena.

North American Indian.—Squaw, wigwam, pemmican.

Peruvian.—Charki = prepared meat; whence jerked beef.

Caribbean.—Hammock.

[§ 85]. A distinction is drawn between the direct and indirect, the latter leading to the ultimate origin of words.

Thus a word borrowed into the English from the French, might have been borrowed into the French from the Latin, into the Latin from the Greek, into the Greek from the Persian, &c., and so ad infinitum.

The investigation of this is a matter of literary curiosity rather than any important branch of philology.

The ultimate known origin of many common words sometimes goes back to a great date, and points to extinct languages—

Ancient Nubian.—Barbarous.

Ancient Egyptian.—Ammonia.