The origins of the word "chocolate" probably comes from the Classical
Nahuatl word
xocolātl (meaning "bitter water"), and entered
the English language from Spanish.
How the word "chocolate" came into Spanish is not certain. Perhaps
the most cited explanation is that "chocolate" comes from Nahuatl,
the language of the Aztecs, from the word "chocolatl", which many
sources derived from the Nahuatl word "xocolatl" (pronounced
[ ʃoˈkolaːtɬ]) made up from the words "xococ"
meaning sour or bitter, and "atl" meaning water or drink.
However, as William Bright noted the word "chocolatl" doesn't
occur in central Mexican colonial sources, making this an unlikely derivation.
Santamaria gives a derivation from the Yucatec Maya word "chokol"
meaning hot, and the Nahuatl "atl" meaning water. More recently Dakin
and Wichman derive it from another Nahuatl term, "chicolatl" from
Eastern Nahuatl meaning "beaten drink". They derive this term from
the word for the frothing stick, "chicoli". The word
xocoatl
means beverage of maize. The words "cacaua atl" mean drink of cacao.
The word "xocolatl" does not appear in Molina's dictionary.
