chocolate [E17th] The first recorded use in English is as a drink made from cocoa beans which was a fashionable drink in the 17th and 18th centuries. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary in 1664: ‘To a Coffee-house, to drink jocolatte, very good.’ The word comes from Spanish chocolate, from Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Aztecs of Mexico) chocolātl ‘food made from cacao seeds’. Cacao [M16th] and cocoa [L17th] are basically the same word, also from Nahuatl. The expression I should cocoa [M20th] is cockney rhyming slang for ‘I should say so’.