Source it first
Sources
Every trail is a claim. Generated pictures are atmosphere. They are never evidence.
orange
Online Etymology Dictionary, orange
The French–Italian–Arabic–Persian–Sanskrit path, n-loss, and the later colour sense.
Limit: Does not settle the Dravidian source of the Sanskrit form.
Oxford English Dictionary, orange n.1
English dating for fruit and colour senses.
Limit: Dictionary dating is of written English, not of the fruit’s first arrival.
tea
Wikipedia, Etymology of tea (with specialist literature)
The te / cha / chai groupings, Portuguese chá, and Dutch thee.
Limit: A summary article. Trade maps in popular essays over-smooth the exceptions.
Horniman Museum, Chá, Chai or Tea?
A clear public account of Min te versus cha, with the maritime and overland pattern.
Limit: A museum story, not a full dialect atlas.
clue
Online Etymology Dictionary, clue
Clew as ball of thread; figurative dating 1590s–1620s.
Limit: Treats the Ariadne story as the image behind the shift. That is the traditional account, not a separate primary proof.
window
Online Etymology Dictionary, window
Old Norse vindauga; Old English ēagþyrel and ēagduru.
Limit: Does not reconstruct a single “first glazed window” date for English houses.
robot
Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (1920)
The play that spread roboti into other languages.
Limit: A literary source for the new sense, not for the older Czech noun robota.
MIT Press Reader, The Czech Play That Gave Us the Word Robot
Josef’s suggestion, robota as serf labour, and the play’s industrial warning.
Limit: A public essay, not the 1933 letter itself.
algebra
Al-Khwārizmī, al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-l-muqābala
The Arabic book whose title contains al-jabr.
Limit: The book is a method. It is not identical with later symbolic algebra.
Library of Congress / standard histories of the Latin translation
Robert of Chester, 1145, as a key Latin path.
Limit: Other Latin versions exist. One translator is not the whole transmission.
school
Standard etymological dictionaries (OED, Etymonline), school
Greek scholḗ “leisure” to Latin schola to English school; separate origin of school of fish.
Limit: Does not describe every historical school institution.
chocolate
Coe and Coe, The True History of Chocolate
Critique of simple chocolātl / xocoatl stories; colonial drink history.
Limit: One major scholarly account. Other linguists offer other reconstructions.
Dakin and Wichmann, on Nawat chikola:tl
A linguistic proposal connecting the word to beating cacao.
Limit: A hypothesis, not a consensus.
ketchup
Carstairs Douglas, Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular of Amoy (1873)
kôe-chiap / kê-chiap as brine of pickled fish or shellfish.
Limit: A nineteenth-century dictionary of Amoy, not a 1600s English cargo list.
Standard dictionary treatments of ketchup / catsup
English dating, early non-tomato recipes, later tomato sense.
Limit: The exact Southeast Asian hand-off remains argued.
pyjamas
Oxford English Dictionary, pyjama / pyjamas
Borrowing via Hindustani from Persian pāy-jāma; early nineteenth-century English evidence.
Limit: Print dates are not the first day someone wore the garment.
algorithm
Latin Algoritmi de numero Indorum tradition
The name Algoritmi as the source of algorism / algorithm.
Limit: The computer-science sense is centuries later.
NASA Earth Observatory, How Algorithm Got Its Name
A clear public account of Khwārezm and the Latinized name.
Limit: A public essay, not a critical edition.
avatar
Monier-Williams and standard Sanskrit dictionaries, avatāra
ava- + tṛ, descent.
Limit: A lexicon is not a full theological account.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, avatar
Hindu usage, especially Vishnu; English religious sense.
Limit: The computing sense is a later English development.
museum
Standard accounts of the Mouseion of Alexandria
A Ptolemaic research community dedicated to the Muses, later source of museum.
Limit: Physical reconstruction of the buildings is uncertain.
panic
Oxford English Dictionary and Online Etymology Dictionary, panic
French panique from Greek panikós, of Pan. Adjective into English in the 1600s, then the noun.
Limit: Dictionary dating is of written English. It does not make Pan the cause of later jobs of the word.
Liddell and Scott, πανικός
The Greek adjective: of Pan; used of a sudden fear attributed to that god.
Limit: A lexicon of ancient usage, not a history of English reception.
echo
Liddell and Scott, ἠχώ and ἦχος
The Greek noun for a returning sound, beside êchos, sound. The nymph’s name is the same word.
Limit: A lexicon. It does not settle how later poets used the personification.
Oxford English Dictionary and Online Etymology Dictionary, echo
English from Latin echo, from Greek ēkhṓ.
Limit: Classroom retellings of Ovid are reception, not the etymology of the noun.
island
Oxford English Dictionary and standard histories of island
Old English īegland; s inserted by association with isle / insula.
Limit: Does not make isle and island synonyms in every historical text.