Chocolate is Nahuatl, taken through Mexican Spanish about 1600, and the -te ending is the standard repair English and Spanish made to the Aztec -tl, which neither language could pronounce. Tomato, coyote and chili all show the same adjustment.
The Nahuatl source is disputed — chocola-tl or cacahua-tl, both ending in a-tl, "water" — and the European form may have been influenced by Mayan chocol, "hot." That detail is telling: the Aztecs drank it cold, the Conquistadors hot, and the word may record the change. It reached Spain by 1520 and spread across Europe as a drink, which is what the word meant for a century; the solid paste is from the 1640s and an individual sweet only from the 1880s. Pepys tried it in 1664 and wrote it "jocolatte."
chocolate (n.) c. 1600, from Mexican Spanish chocolate , from Nahuatl (Aztecan) chocola-tl, "chocolate," and/or cacahua-tl "chocolate, chocolate bean." With a-tl "water." In the first form, the first element might be related to xocalia "to make something bitter or sour" [Karttunen]. Made with cold water by the Aztecs, with hot water by the Conquistadors, and the European forms of the word might have been influenced by Mayan chocol "hot." Brought to Spain by 1520, from there it spread to the rest of Europe. Originally a drink made by dissolving chocolate in milk or water, it was very popular 17c. To a Coffee-house, to drink jocolatte, very good [Pepys, diary, Nov. 24, 1664]. As a paste or cake made of ground, roasted, sweetened cacao seeds, 1640s. As "a piece of chocolate candy," 1880s. As a dark reddish-brown color from 1776. The adjective is from 1723 as "made of or flavored with chocolate;" 1771 as "having the color of chocolate." Chocolate milk is by 1845. Chocolate-chip is from 1940. also from c. 1600
chocolate came in through Later and wider borrowings, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
What gives it away on the page
| -tl reshaped into -te | Nahuatl, through Spanish.chocolate, tomato, avocado, coyote, chili |
Placing it without the spelling
| the Americas — ranching, weather, food | Spanishtornado, canyon, chocolate, tomato |
Later and wider borrowings in the spelling guide · guess another word's family