Word of the Day: April 21, 2009 ~ pretzel

pretzel (pret-suhl) - noun

A pretzel is "a crisp, dry biscuit, usually in the form of a knot or stick, salted on the outside."

The word pretzel comes to us from the German word Brezel or Pretzel, which was borrowed into English (first recorded in American English in 1856) and goes back to the assumed Medieval Latin word brāchitellum, which was "a kind of biscuit baked in the shape of folded arms." It is said that a monk living in France or northern Italy first created the knotted shape of a pretzel. The monk wanted to symbolize arms folded in prayer, hence the name derived from Latin bracchiātus, "having branches," itself from bracchium, meaning "branch."