Etymology
Curry was adopted and anglicised from the Tamil word kari (கறி) meaning 'sauce', which is usually understood to mean vegetables and/or meat cooked with spices with or without a gravy. According to this theory, kari was first encountered in the mid-17th century by members of the British East India Company trading with Tamil merchants along the Coromandel Coast of southeast India, particularly at Fort St. George (later called Madras and renamed Chennai in 1996). Here, they became familiar with "a spice blend used for making kari dishes ... called kari podi or curry powder."
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Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
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