Quote:
Originally Posted by hobnail
Have you ever thought about what an odd word cookie is? Cook can be a verb, what you do to food, and a noun, someone who cooks. But add "ie" to it and it becomes a pastry. Say what? Why not "bakie"? That's at least closer to how they're cooked.
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Seeing as biscuit pretty much translates into English as twice cooked, calling them cookies is moderately sensible though cookie is based on the Dutch koek (small cake). The Italian biscotti comes closest to the original biscuit where they were baked and then dried in a low oven.
A James Nicoll quote comes to mind:
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."