Almanac looks like the Arabic borrowings it sits beside — alcohol, algebra, alkali — and for a long time it was assumed to be one. The truth is that nobody knows. The word reached English in the late 1300s through Old French almanach or Medieval Latin almanachus, meaning a book of permanent tables of astronomical data, and the Latin is often said to come from Arabic somehow, but no proposed Arabic source fits both the sound and the sense.
The suggestions are worth the trouble. The Oxford English Dictionary points to a supposed Spanish-Arabic al-manakh, "calendar," possibly from a Late Greek word almenichiakon that is itself said to be Coptic. One scholar has argued in detail that the word is pseudo-Arabic — invented among astronomers in Paris in the mid-1200s to sound learned. What we can date is the content: the year-by-year calendars from the 1500s, the astrological and weather predictions from the 1500s and 1600s, and the useful statistics only recently.
almanac (n.) late 14c., "book of permanent tables of astronomical data," attested in Anglo-Latin from mid-13c., via Old French almanach or directly from Medieval Latin almanachus , a word of uncertain origin and the subject of much speculation. The Latin word is often said to be ultimately from Arabic somehow, but an exact phonological and semantic fit is wanting. OED connects it to a supposed Spanish-Arabic al-manakh "calendar, almanac," which is possibly ultimately from Late Greek almenichiakon "calendar," which itself is said to be of Coptic origin. The author of English words of Arabic Ancestry makes a detailed case "that the word almanac was pseudo-Arabic and was generated within the circle of astronomers in Paris in the mid 13th century." One-year versions, showing correspondence of days of the week and month, ecclesiastical calendars, etc., date from 16c.; "astrological and weather predictions appear in 16-17th c.; the 'useful statistics' are a modern feature" [OED]. also from late 14c.
almanac came in through Later and wider borrowings, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
How that family writes these sounds
| a technical noun about maths, chemistry, or the stars | Arabic: al- welded onto the front, article and allalgebra, algorithm, alcohol, almanac |
What gives it away on the page
| al- fused to the front of the noun | Arabic, usually via Spanish or Latin — al is the article, stuck on permanently.alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alkali, almanac, admiral |
Placing it without the spelling
| mathematics, chemistry, the stars | Arabic, through Spanish or Latinalgebra, algorithm, alcohol, almanac |
Later and wider borrowings in the spelling guide · guess another word's family