Etymology

amadou

A1M3A1D2O1U1

Today it means: A spongy, flammable substance prepared from bracket fungi, formerly used as a styptic and as tinder. Full definition →

French amadou
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. French · borrowed fromamadou“tinder, lure, bait”
  2. English todayamadou

From French amadou (“tinder, lure, bait”), from amadouer (“to allure, caress”), perhaps from Icelandic mata (“to feed”), which is akin to English meat.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.