#frumety

I have at least a half-dozen pretty interesting (well, I think they’re interesting, anyway) Words of the Day just waiting to be written, when or if I can muster up the motivation. But I just stumbled across a word I’ve never heard or seen before, and it’s too good to pass up. The Word of the Day is “furmenty.”

Actually, that wasn’t the exact word I came upon. I was reading a description of a “low-class gambling house” in London during the reign of Elizabeth I, known for its “strong ale, furmety, and meat pies.”

“Furmety.” That’s how it was written, with no “n” in the middle. So I looked it up in my big dictionary (I sometimes start there, before going to the interweb.) There was no entry for “furmety,” but there was one for “furmenty.” It said “furmenty” is a British dialect word for “frumenty.” Now we were getting somewhere!

When I looked up “frumenty,” it said that was a British dialect word, too, and it was also spelled “fromenty,” “furmenty,” and – aha! – “furmety.”

So what the heck *is* frumenty/fromenty/furmenty/furmety? Turns out it’s a kind of porridge. There are lots of recipes online if you’re interested, but the basic recipe includes wheat boiled in milk with cinnamon, sugar and maybe some raisins. The key here is the wheat, or other grain, because “frumenty” is derived from the Latin “frumentum,” meaning “grain.”