caseous — cheesy or “resembling cheese”
caseoso — the masculine Spanish cognate of the same meaning
caseosa — the feminine Spanish cognate of the same meaning
This is an English word that I wish I’d known when I was still teaching Spanish. Food vocabulary is extensive, yet the commonly used Spanish food words are an important part of any Spanish curriculum, and they are the words that teenagers most like to learn.
One of the very common Spanish food words is “queso.” Many people know the word “queso” even though they don’t know other words in Spanish. “Queso” is “cheese,” and it’s the basis for a popular Mexican food called a “quesadilla” — a combination of cheese and a tortilla. It’s a bit of a stretch for students to see “cheese” and “queso” as cognates, but they are.
Those two words come to us from Latin’s caseus which means “cheese.” Now, if you look at that Latin word and then at the cognates listed above, it’s easy to see where we got “caseous” and where Spanish got “caseoso” and “caseosa.”
The pronunciation of our English word “caseous” is easily comparable to the beginning pronunciation of “queso,” also. That’s why I wish I’d been familiar with the word “caseous” back when I was teaching Spanish — I would have used it then to help the students see the cognate relationship as well as the pronunciation relationship.
Alas, I only recently discovered this word.
It got me thinking about another lesser-known English/Spanish cognate food pair. The English word is “cole.” Most commonly, we use that as the first part of the word “coleslaw.” What is the main ingredient in coleslaw?
It’s cabbage.
Technically, “cole” is “any of several brassicas.” What the heck is a “brassica?” Well, I’m not going to get into all the technicalities of it, but essentially a cabbage is a type of brassica, and a cabbage can be referred to as a “cole.” Thus, when we chop up “cole” and add other ingredients, we get a “coleslaw.”
Knowing this helps you see that there is a direct cognate in Spanish for “cole,” meaning “cabbage.” That word is “col.”
When I was teaching, my students would often make the association between “coleslaw” and “col” to help them remember the word “col” for “cabbage,” but I didn’t investigate the words further. If I had, I would have gained more cognate cognizance back then.
Recently, on some cooking show my boyfriend likes to watch (I’m not a fan, so I don’t recall which one it was, but what transpired on it caught my attention), they were using “bacalao” in some food preparation. I was surprised because I didn’t know that we used that word in English. I only knew it in Spanish as the Spanish word for “codfish.”
According to the show’s host, “bacalao” is used to refer to salted and dried codfish. All right. However, “bacalao” is the only word in Spanish I’ve ever learned for “cod,” so that’s what it is to me. Any seafood aficionado, though, might benefit from already knowing the word “bacalao” in English, so she can transfer that to Spanish, or vice versa as I have done. Various etymological explanations exist, so I won’t get into all of them here.
Another fish food is “tuna.” In creating the word “tuna,” we took the Spanish word for it, which is “atún,” and we simply altered the word. Thus, “tuna” and “atún” are cognates, too.
The next time you eat at a Mexican restaurant, I dare you to order some “caseous” nachos and see if the server knows what you mean. I’m guessing he won’t, but maybe he has more cognate cognizance than I did prior to learning this word.
“Caseous” can also describe something that is entirely NOT appetizing — think of the “cheesy” appearance of dying, damaged flesh. Ugh. I bet you just lost your appetite for those “caseous” nachos, didn’t you? Sorry.
Until next time. If you missed learning about “orison,” please upgrade to paid and gain access to last week’s post as well as to the full archive of “Cognate Cognizance.”
Tammy Marshall
Caseous