Pumpernickel - Wikipedia

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A very dark, dense wholegrain pumpernickel

Contemporary English pumpernickel is a loanword from German Pumpernickel (compare also German Pompernickel and Bompernickel), referring to a black bread from Westphalia. The word is found in English-language literature as early as 1738. Before its use to refer to the bread, the German word was used to mean "lout" (and can later be found in southern German-speaking areas in use for "vivacious child" or "small, plump person or child"). The German word is constructed from two elements: Early modern German pumper meaning 'fart' (recorded in 1558 in this sense) or "to knock, fall noisily", from which the sense of "fart" derived (Middle High German pumpern). The second element, Nickel, is pet form of the name Nikolaus.[1] An earlier word for the bread is attested in English as cranck broat, meaning "sick bread".[1]

The Oxford English Dictionary highlights that while there is uncertainty around the exact sense of the word Pumpernickel as used in German to refer to the bread, "it is clearly depreciative", potentially a negative means of describing Westphalian bread by outsiders. According to the dictionary, "This type of bread was probably so called either on account of its being difficult to digest and causing flatulence or in a more general allusion to its hardness and poor quality".[1]

As early as the 1600s, a folk etymology is recorded that proposes that the name Pumpernickel derives from the French bon pour Nicole ("good only for Nicole"), where Nicole was purportedly the name of a horse. While false, this etymology is found in early modern German and is reflected in the form bonpournikel.[1]

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