bagel

Etymology

It is borrowed from Yiddish בייגל (beygl),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} a Yiddish word recorded from the early 17th century or earlier.^[2] The OED derives the Yiddish word either from German Beugel, a regional word in Silesia and Austria for a ring- or crescent-shaped bread or pastry, recorded from the early 16th century, or from its unrecorded Middle High German source;^[2][4] that source is a diminutive of Middle High German bouc (“ring, bracelet”),^[2][3][4][5] from Old High German boug (“ring”),^[5][3][6] related to biogan (“to bend”).^[6] The Old High German word is related to Old English bēag (“ring, bracelet”) (an Anglo-Saxon lord was in poetry a beaggifa (“ring-giver”)),^[5][4] and comes from Proto-Germanic *baugaz (“ring”),^[5][8] from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewgʰ- (“to bend”).^[5][6][3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A dense ring-shaped roll made by boiling dough and then baking it: 1898, in the New York Commercial Advertiser.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The OED notes that bagels are already mentioned in a Yiddish document of 1610 with rules for the Jewish community of Cracow, and that the food is probably much older.^[2] English writers at first spelled the word beigel as well as bagel;^[6][5][7] Barnhart finds beigel in 1919 and bagel in 1932.^[6] From the 1950s the word was used in American slang as an offensive name for a Jewish person,^[2][9] and in South Africa from 1981 for a type of wealthy, spoilt young Jewish man.^[2] In tennis slang, from 1974, a bagel is a set won six games to love, from the likeness of the figure 0 to the bagel's shape;^[2][4][10] the verb, to win a set without losing a game, appeared the same year.^[2]

Timeline

• 1898 – a ring-shaped roll, boiled and then baked.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates it to 1908, Etymonline to 1912, as beigel, and Barnhart to 1919.^[4][5][6]
• 1932 – the spelling bagel.^[6]
• 1956 – US slang, offensive, a Jewish person.^[2]
• 1974 – tennis slang, a set won six games to love; the verb, to win a set six–love.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the verb to 1976.^[4]
• 1981 – South African slang, a wealthy, spoilt young Jewish man.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A firm, ring-shaped bread roll made of yeast dough that is briefly boiled and then baked, giving it a glossy crust: They split a sesame bagel for breakfast.^[4][2][10]
2. (tennis slang) A set won six games to love.^[10][4][2]
3. (US slang, offensive) A Jewish person.^[2][9]

Verb

1. (tennis slang) To win a set against an opponent without losing a game.^[10][4][2]

Related words

• bow

Usage notes

The OED rejects as unsupported the story that a Jewish baker in Vienna invented the bagel in 1683 in the shape of a stirrup, German Bügel, to honour King John III Sobieski of Poland: Bügel comes from the same Germanic base as Beugel but cannot be the source of bagel on formal grounds, and bagels were mentioned in Cracow in 1610.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins