THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE CIGAR.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3956, 12 August 1918, Page 4

THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE CIGAR.

It is * matter of common knowladgt that cigar is a jSpanjsh. word, but thai it means garden is not equally common knowledge. When tobacoo was firs* brought from America to Spain th« Spanish dons cultivated it in gardens and in those days it was a mark of ciasi to grow your own tobacco, and when entertaining a friend offer him a smoke "E& de mi cigarral," meaning "It ia from my garden." Foreign misapprehension assumed "cigarral" to be Spanish for tobacco, the word being used shortened into "cigarro" to indicate a roll of tobacoo for smoking. The transition into "cigar" is obviously natural shortening. Stranger still is it when the' meaning of the word "cagarral" 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 are thickest. So that to-daj- our word "cigar" is derived from "garden;" which was, in turn, derived from "grass. bopper."