Spelt
/spɛlt/noun
An ancient species of wheat, or the past tense and past participle of "spell."
Did you know?The grain name and the verb spelling are historically separate words: the wheat word comes through Latin from a pre-Indo-European substrate, while the verb past tense comes from Old English spellian, meaning to tell or recite.
Etymological Timeline
Old English
OE
spel
“a story, discourse, message, or report”
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*spellą
“speech, tale, account”
Old English
OE
speld
“a splinter, chip, or torch”
Latin
Latin
spelta
“spelt, a type of wheat”
Modern English
English
spelt
“the past tense/past participle of spell; also an old wheat species”