| 词汇 | tobacco |
| 词源 | tobacco. The common name for the tobacco plant is the result of a mistake and seems to have first been recorded in Christo- pher Columbus’s journal for November 6, 1492: “My messen- gers reported that after a march of about twelve miles they had discovered a village with about 1,000 inhabitants. The natives had received them ceremoniously, and had lodged them in the most beautiful houses. They encountered many men and wom- en carrying some sort of cylinder in which sweetly smelling herbs were glowing. The people sucked the other end of the cylinder and, as it were, drank in the smoke. Natives said they called these cylinders tabacos.” Clearly then, the Carib word ta- baco meant the reed pipes in which the natives smoked the dried leaves, but over the years tabaco, the ancestor of our to- bacco, came to designate the leaves themselves and then the to- bacco plant. |
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