What snake's name means "snake" in
Portuguese?
Etymology, Etymology, and more Etymology
as well as grammar, usage, euphemism, slang, jargon, semantics, linguistics, neologism, idiom, cant, and argot.
The critically-acclaimed board game
MooT
consists of tough questions about the nuances of the English language.
Answer:
the Cobra
According to
http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/4195/words.htm
"When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama landed
his fleet at Calicut, India, in 1498, the Portuguese became aware of, among
other things, a venomous snake with the remarkable ability to expand the skin
of its neck to form a hood.
The Hindi
word the Indians used for the snake was nag,
but the Portuguese decided to rename it in their own language
cobra de capello, "hooded snake". The
Portuguese name was borrowed into English in the 17th century. By the
nineteenth century its name in English had become shortened to
cobra ."
Copyright 1998-2009 Blair Arts Ltd. All rights reserved.