The Etymology of Lentil
Lentil reached English in the 13th century via Old French lentille, the regular descendant of Latin lenticula — itself a diminutive of lens, lentis, the Roman name for the small flat seed of the legume now known botanically as Lens culinaris. Lentils are among the oldest cultivated crops on Earth: archaeological remains from the Fertile Crescent push their domestication back to at least 8000 BCE, and the Latin word probably preserves a Mediterranean or Indo-European substrate term whose deeper origin is uncertain. The most surprising descendant of the Latin lens is not culinary but optical. In the early 17th century, when Dutch and Italian craftsmen began grinding biconvex glass discs for telescopes and spectacles, they noticed that the shape resembled a flat lentil seed. They named the device a lens, and the term passed into every European scientific vocabulary. Today the eyes contain lenses and dinner contains lentils, and both come from the same Latin word.