jaggery

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English

WOTD – 29 June 2022

Alternative forms

Etymology

PIE word
*ḱorkeh₂
A piece of jaggery.

Borrowed from Indo-Portuguese jágara, jagra, from Malayalam ചക്കര (cakkara, “jaggery”) or Tamil சக்கரை (cakkarai), from Sanskrit शर्करा (śarkarā, “candied or ground sugar; (chiefly in the plural) grit, gravel, shingle; gravelly soil; pebble”),[1] ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱorkeh₂ (“boulder; gravel”). Doublet of sugar.

Pronunciation

Noun

jaggery (countable and uncountable, plural jaggeries)

  1. A traditional dark-brown unrefined sugar made from palm tree sap which is used throughout South and Southeast Asia; (by extension) other types of unrefined sugar.
    • 1681, Robert Knox, An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, in the East-Indies: , London: Richard Chiswell, printer to the Royal Society, , →OCLC, page 15:
      The next Tree is the Kettule. […] It yieldeth a ſort of Liquor, which they call Tellegie: it is rarely ſweet and pleaſing to the Pallate, and as wholſom to the Body, but no ſtronger than water. […] An ordinary Tree will yield ſome three, ſome four Gallons in a day, ſome more and ſome leſs. The which Liquor they boyl and make a kind of brown Sugar, called Jaggory; […]
    • 1720, [Daniel Defoe], The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton, London: J Brotherton, , J Graves , A Dodd, , and T Warner, , →OCLC, page 304:
      On Sunday, Oct. 12. being ſtored vvith all things needful for their Journey, viz. Ten Days Proviſion, a Baſin to boil their Provision in, two Calabaſhes to fetch VVater in, and tvvo great Tallipat Leaves for Tents, with Jaggory, Svveet-meats, Tobacco, Betell, Tinder-Boxes, and a Deer-Skin for Shoes, to keep their Feet from Thorns, becauſe to them they chiefly truſted.
    • 1834, Rám Ráz, Essay on the Architecture of the Hindús, London: or the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland; by John William Parker, , →OCLC, page 64:
      In all the operations of chunam work, jaggery water, i. e. a solution of molasses or coarse sugar, is invariably added by the builders, and its use appears to have prevailed from the remotest ages. There are various opinions among the modern practitioners regarding its usefulness, but those who have had the most extensive practice in building, hold it as an indispensable ingredient in the formation of a durable and hard cement; and it is stated that the operator evidently perceives the dissolvent property of the jaggery water, on its being tempered with the prepared mortar.
    • 1958, R. K. Narayan [Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami], chapter 6, in The Guide , Harmondsworth, Middlesex : Penguin Books, published 1980, →ISBN, page 78:
      He counted the seasons by the special points that jutted out, such as the harvest in January, when his disciples brought him sugar cane and jaggery cooked with rice; […]
  2. (by extension) A small-scale production plant that processes sugar cane to make sugar.

Descendants

Translations

References

  1. ^ “jaggery, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2020; “jaggery, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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