caviar

Forms

caviar m (plural caviars)^[1] Middle French cavyaire (1432), caviat (1552, still in 1771) and cavial (1660 to 1771), beside caviar from 1553.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Venetian caviaro, beside Italian caviale, both taken from Ottoman Turkish خاویار (havyar).^[2][3][4] Bloch and Wartburg derive it from the Italian form alone,^[5] and Wiktionary allows a direct borrowing from Turkish beside the Italian route.^[1] The Italian form gave the classical spelling cavial (1660).^[2][3] The Turkish word goes back to Persian خاویار (xâvyâr),^[1] which Etymonline connects with a Persian word for “egg”.^[6] Rey stresses that the word did not come from Russian, which uses a quite unrelated term for the food, although the delicacy was later imported from Russia.^[3][4]

Cognate with Spanish cavial and Portuguese caviar.^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is cavyaire in 1432, in an account by B. de la Broquière;^[2] Rabelais has caviat in 1552 among the dishes offered at the start of a meal, and Belon caviar in 1553.^[2][7] From the start it named the salted roe of the sturgeon.^[3]

Semantic evolution

For a long time caviar was an exotic word for a foreign food, known in France mainly because it was eaten in Italy and later in Germany; only around 1900 did it become a costly luxury dish in France, regularly paired with champagne and foie gras.^[3] In trade the word is restricted to sturgeon roe, sold in several kinds and sometimes pressed (caviar pressé), but it is also used more loosely, as Russian ikra is, for the roe of other fish: caviar rouge is salmon roe.^[3][2] As a symbol of wealth it gave the recent phrase la gauche caviar, the moneyed left.^[3][9]

From 1877 it also named the black ink with which a censor blotted out passages of a text, after a practice of the Russian censorship under Nicholas I,^[2][3][10] hence passer au caviar “to black out” and the verb caviarder (1907).^[9][3] Since about the 1960s it has also named a dish of finely crushed vegetables, as in caviar d'aubergine.^[3][9]

Timeline

• 1432 – Cavyaire appears in La Broquière's account.^[2][3]
• 1552 – Rabelais writes caviat.^[2][7]
• 1553 – Belon uses the form caviar.^[2][5]
• 1660 – Oudin records cavial, from the Italian form.^[2]
• 1690 – Furetière gives only cavial.^[3]
• 1771 – Last record of caviat and cavial, in the Dictionnaire de Trévoux.^[2]
• 1877 – Littré's Supplement records the sense “censor's black ink”.^[2][10]
• 1907 – The verb caviarder is formed.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Salted sturgeon roe, eaten as a costly hors-d'œuvre.^[9][2]
2. (by extension) The roe of other fish, prepared in the same way: caviar rouge, salmon roe.^[2][9]
3. (figurative) A symbol of luxury and wealth: la gauche caviar.^[9][3]
4. Passer au caviar: to black out a passage of a text, as a censor does.^[9][10]
5. (cooking) A dish of finely crushed vegetables: caviar d'aubergine.^[9][3]

Word family

• caviarder
• caviardage

Related words

• English caviar

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
5. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
6. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c d e f g h Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ a b c Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse