(kĕchˈəp, kăchˈ-) also catch·up (kăchˈəp, kĕchˈ-) or cat·sup (kătˈsəp, kăchˈəp, kĕchˈ-)
noun A condiment consisting of a thick, smooth-textured, spicy sauce usually made from tomatoes.
Word History: The word
ketchup exemplifies the types of modifications that can take place in borrowing—both of words and substances. The source of our word
ketchup may be the Malay word
kēchap, possibly taken into Malay from the Cantonese dialect of Chinese.
Kēchap, like
ketchup, was a sauce, but one without tomatoes; rather, it contained fish brine, herbs, and spices. Sailors seem to have brought the sauce to Europe, where it was made with locally available ingredients such as the juice of mushrooms or walnuts. At some unknown point, when the juice of tomatoes was first used, ketchup as we know it was born. But it is important to realize that in the 18th and 19th centuries
ketchup was a generic term for sauces whose only common ingredient was vinegar. The word is first recorded in English in 1690 in the form
catchup, in 1711 in the form
ketchup, and in 1730 in the form
catsup. All three spelling variants of this foreign borrowing remain current.
