Chocolate

You're holding a bar of chocolate right now -- or you were an hour ago. But here's what you don't know: you're holding something that Aztec warriors drank before battle, and it tasted nothing like what's in your mouth.

Most people think chocolate comes from some Spanish word, or maybe it's just always been called chocolate. Simple. Obvious. Wrong.

The real journey starts in Mesoamerica with the Nahuatl word *xocolatl* -- pronounced roughly "cho-ko-lah-tul." The Aztecs made a bitter, spicy drink from cacao beans, something ceremonial and rare. When Spanish conquistadors reached Mexico in the early 1500s, they encountered this drink and the word for it. They couldn't quite pronounce *xocolatl*, so it shifted and softened as it traveled through Spanish lips. By the 1580s, it had become *chocolate* in Spanish texts. Then it moved north into French, English, and across Europe with traders and missionaries. Each language bent it a little differently, but the Nahuatl root never fully disappeared.

Here's the kicker: the Aztecs never added sugar to theirs. When chocolate reached Europe, particularly Spain, chocolate-makers added cane sugar imported from the Caribbean. That's when chocolate became dessert instead of medicine.

Today when you unwrap a candy bar, you're speaking Nahuatl without knowing it -- three languages removed from an Aztec warrior's pre-battle ritual drink.

Chocolate is your word of the day. This is The Why of Words.