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World word: soap

Language Log 2024-06-24

Behold the Latin word sāpō (soap) and its many, many descendants which include the Mother of the Austronesian language family—the indigenous Formosan languages of Taiwan:

阿美語 Amis: safon 噶瑪蘭語 Kavalam: sabun 卑南語 Puyuma: sabun 鄒語 Tsou: savungu https://t.co/aYrp1a8bEl pic.twitter.com/YvbyQWTRI7

— Ted (@ted_huang) June 17, 2024

Be sure to click on the map to embiggen it so that you can see all the connecting lines.

I noticed that the Taiwanese / Minnan word for "soap" is listed on the map as being derived from the same source.  Thinking that Chau Wu, a regular contributor to Language Log who is very good at such sleuthing, may have been responsible for this discovery, I wrote to him:

Were you the first person to recognize that Minnan sab4 bhung ultimately came from the Latin word for "soap"?

He replied:

Many people in Taiwan are aware that the Tw word for soap, sap-bûn/sat-bûn, is related to those of Romance languages. I recalled when I was an undergraduate student, I took the organic chemistry course. The professor was a Taiwanese but spoke with an impeccable Beijing accent. During his lectures on fats, fatty acids, and soap, he mentioned that the name for the chemical reaction saponification is derived from Latin sapon-, that the French word for soap is savon, and that in Taiwanese it is sap-bûn. I was greatly impressed.

So, as you can see, I was not the first one.

Etymonline

Middle English sope, from Old English sape "soap, salve," anciently a reddish hair dye used by Germanic warriors to give a frightening appearance, from Proto-Germanic *saipon "dripping thing, resin" (source also of Middle Low German sepe, West Frisian sjippe, Dutch zeep, Old High German seiffa, German seife "soap," Old High German seifar "foam," Old English sipian "to drip"), from PIE *soi-bon-, from root *seib- "to pour out, drip, trickle" (perhaps also the source also of Latin sebum "tallow, suet, grease").

Romans and Greeks used oil to cleanse the skin; the Romance words for "soap" (Italian sapone, French savon, Spanish jabon) are from Late Latin sapo "pomade for coloring the hair" (first mentioned in Pliny), which is a Germanic loan-word, as is Finnish saippua. The figurative meaning "flattery" is recorded from 1853.

Cf. sebacceous:

1728, "secreting sebum;" 1783, "pertaining to tallow or fat;" from Latin sebaceus "of tallow," from sebum "tallow, grease" (see sebum). Meaning "oily, greasy, fatty" is from 1783.

sebum

"a secretion of the sebaceous glands," 1728, from medical use of Latin sebum "sebum, suet, grease," which is perhaps related to sapo "soap" (see soap (n.)), but de Vaan is skeptical and gives it no etymology.

also from 1728

Wiktionary "soap"

From Middle English sope, sape, from Old English sāpe (“soap, salve”), from Proto-West Germanic *saipā, from Proto-Germanic *saipǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *seyb-, *seyp- (“to pour out, drip, trickle, strain”).

Cognate with Scots saip, sape (“soap”), Saterland Frisian Seepe (“soap”), West Frisian sjippe (“soap”), Dutch zeep (“soap”), German Low German Seep (“soap”), German Seife (“soap”), Danish sæbe (“soap”), Swedish såpa (“soap”), Norwegian Bokmål såpe (“soap”), Norwegian Nynorsk såpe (“soap”), Faroese sápa (“soap”), Icelandic sápa (“soap”). Related also to Old English sāp (“amber, resin, pomade, unguent”), Latin sēbum (“tallow, fat, grease”). See seep. Latin sāpō (“soap”) is a borrowing from the Germanic.

For the history, science, culture, and manufacture of soap, see this Wikipedia article.

 

Selected readings

[h.t. Geoff Wade]