When treacle is good for your soul

Q. So, treacle: a thick, black substance obtained from the sugar cane

A. True, that's how we usually think of it now. But originally it applied to many medicinal compounds - most famously theriaca androchi or Venice treacle, a compound of 64 drugs mixed into honey.

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Q. How so

A. The word treacle has come into modern English via the French triacle and Latin theriaca from the Greek theriaca pharmaka meaning 'animal compounds', which was the substance produced by Greek doctors as medicine used in cases of patients being bitten by wild animals. The filling for your treacle tart resembles these medicines, hence the name.

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The ther of theriaca is the Ancient Greek for 'wild animal' and the same root is apparent in the German Tier, animal, and the English word deer.

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Q. Why bring Bambi into this

A. The Anglo-Saxon deor meant any wild animal, not just a 'ruminant quadruped of the family Cervidae' (as the dictionary describes it). So the 'der' in 'wilderness', a place where wild animals (wild deor) roam, is the same word.

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Q. What's all this about souls, then

A. The root of all these related words can be traced even further back to the Indo-European dheusom, meaning 'a breathing animal', and, in a separate development in the Slavic group of languages, so can, as philologist Alexander Tulloch has pointed out, the modern Russian dusha, which means 'soul'.

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith