Gramer Girl here, I'm Minion Fogarty. I have a meaty middle about delicious words with

an interesting origin, and a tidbit about the phrase Locke's stock and barrel. Here we go.

Most people like chocolate, but most of us probably don't know from which language

the English word originates. Take a guess. Perhaps you thought of Spanish, because the word

chocolate in that language is chocolate. Sorry, that's not right. However, Spanish speakers

who encountered the Aztecs do have something to do with it. Keep listening to learn

about a few English words that come from an Aztec language.

Nawaddle. Nawaddle is one of 62 individual languages in the Udo Aztec and family, and

it's spoken today by about half a million people in Central and Northern Mexico. It was

spoken in the city of Tonotchtylan when Hernán Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1521. In the

early 16th century, the Aztec Empire, also known as the Mexica Empire, had control of about

five to six million people. Now, back to chocolate. You might have heard that the famous Aztec

leader Monazuma consumed chocolate, but he did so in a very different way than a modern

person who might nibble on a chocolate bar. The English word chocolate entered our language

between 1595 and 1605. It comes from the Nawaddle word, Chocolatol spelled XOCO-L-A-T-L. This

Nawaddle word comes from Chococ, which means sour, bitter, plus otl, which means water.

This origin gives us a clue as to how the Aztecs used chocolate. It was a bitter drink

with cocoa beans. It was a frothy beverage, and it seemed that Monazuma added vanilla and

spices to it. The Aztecs weren't the first to use chocolate, though. The Olmec people, who lived

in Mesoamerica, first cultivated cacao plants around 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. They believed

that chocolate had mystic qualities. Interestingly, the Latin name for the cacao tree means food of the gods.

The Olmec passed on knowledge of the cacao plant to the Maya, who then passed on a liking for

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