THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE CIGAR.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXV, Issue 3210, 2 March 1914, Page 1

THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE CIGAR.

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It is a matter of common knowledg*. that cigar is a Spanish word, but that it means garden is not equally common knowledge. When tobacco was first brought from America to Spain th« Spanish dons «cultivated it in gardens and in those days it was a mark of class to grow your own tobacco, and when entertaining a friend offer him a smoke "Es de mi cigarral," meaning "It is from my garden." Foreign misapprehension assumed "cigarral" to be. Spanish for tobacco, the word being used shortened into "cigarro" to indicate a roll of tobacco for smoking. The transition into "cigar" is obviously ~

natural shortening. Stranger still is it when the meaning of the word "cigarral" is examined. "Cigarral" originally meant "grasshopper, "and because in Spain the grasshoppers were plentiful in the house garden the Spaniards defined the garden as "cigarral," or place where the grasshoppers ar« thickest. So that to-day our word "cigar" is derived from "garden," which was, in turn, derived from "grasshopper."