Etymology

granola

G2R1A1N1O1L1A1

Today it means: A breakfast and snack food consisting of loose, crispy pellets made of nuts, rolled oats, honey and other natural ingredients. Full definition →

Italian grano
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The story

  1. Italian · derived fromgrano“grain”
  2. English todaygranola

Genericized trademark from Granola, a brand of breakfast cereal registered in 1886 by Will Keith Kellogg and in use into the early 20th century. It was initially known as Granula and renamed Granola to avoid legal problems with James Caleb Jackson, who invented a similar cereal in 1863, named Granula after the granules of Graham flour, the main ingredient. The food and name were revived in the 1960s. By 1967, it appears in American English, probably from Italian grano (“grain”) or granular + the commercial suffix -ola.

Words from the same roots

Italiangrano all →

grano

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.