SC - OT: Harry Potter - now me too

[Drake & Meliora]

Adamantius spake:
>
> I wonder if perhaps it is a toffee made with butter, then
> "scotched" into squares in the pan as it cools. I offer this alternate
> explanation not because I know, but because I don't.
>

Well, the OED wasn't a lot of help -- butterscotch was listed only as one of
the compound words under butter, with no etymology given for the compound,
and defined as a kind of toffee made primarily of butter and sugar.  (I
found no cross-reference under scotch, though in the sense of
incision/cut/score/mark/gash it did note hopscotch.)

So then I turned to www.dogpile.com, which site searches multiple search
engines, and via www.google.com it led me to "Dave Wilton's Etymological
Errors Page" <www.wilton.net/errors.htm>, which states, in discussing
superficial resemblances:

Often the error is that one word has a Latin root, while its similar-looking
neighbor comes from a Germanic root. In these cases, the two words are often
distantly related in that they share an Indo-European root, but they entered
the English language through entirely different routes. An example of this
is butterscotch, which has nothing to do with Scotland or with whisky. Scot,
as in Scotland, comes originally from the Latin Scoti, the Roman word for
the people of north Britain. From this comes the adjective Scotch which is
used to refer to things Scottish, including the whisky. The scotch in
butterscotch comes from the Middle English scocchen, and from there probably
from the Old French coche and the Latin Vulgate cocca, meaning a notch or
nick. The candy was notched, or scored, to make it easier to break into
pieces.


Now, how authoritative Dave Wilton is I don't know, but he is backed up on
this by www.word-detective.com (also found via dogpile).  In an archived
column from last December, The Word Detective (Words and Language in a
Humorous Vein Since 1995) said:

And while we're at it, butterscotch candy doesn't come from you-know-where.
It's called that because it is made from butter and used to be cut
("scotched") into small pieces.


And in the Christian Science Monitor, in a "Word Chase" Home Front column in
May 1998 (also found via dogpile), Nancy M. Kendall said:

Hopscotch has nothing to do with men in kilts, or even Scotland. It means
"line leap." "Scotch" is from the French word, escocher, meaning to scratch
lines in the ground. Players hop over the "scotches," or lines. Originally,
to "scotch" meant to cut notches on a counting stick, which may have
something to do with a favorite English toffee. Where does the name
"butterscotch" come from? To make it, one must cut or "scotch" the
butter-colored confection into squares.


So -- it appears the surmise of Adamantius was right on the button.  And
recipes that include scotch whisky probably do so from a feeling that it
*should* be an ingredient, because it's right there in the name.


In wordy service to cooks, I remain

your honours' in dutie.

Brendan Pilgrim                       poet, rogue, scholar, and foole
http://come.to/your.pilgrim       rygbee(at)montana(dot)com
          Cognitio et Cogitatio Vitae Pennas Dant
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