What is the origin of baksheesh?
Baksheesh “a tip, present, or gratuity” is adapted from Persian bakhshish “gift,” a noun derived from the verb bakhshidan “to give.” Because Persian is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, bakhshidan comes from a Proto-Indo-European root, bhag- “to share out, apportion, receive a share”; we learned about this root previously as the source of the Word of the Day nebbish, which comes from a Slavic term meaning “poor”—or, originally, “not having received a share.” As we saw earlier this week with the Word of the Day auriferous, the Proto-Indo-European sound bh (“buh” pronounced with a puff of air) often becomes ph in Ancient Greek, which explains how bhag- becomes phagein “to eat,” as in esophagus as well as the combining form -phage, which is used to designate cells that eat foreign particles and bacteria. Baksheesh was first recorded in English in 1620.