I've been editing a book on food and drink this week, and came across the word shrub. No, not a bush or a plant, but a word meaning a drink made of orange or lemon juice, sugar and spirit, usually rum, which is why the word rum-shrub is also in the dictionary. The horticultural word shrub comes from the Old English scrybb, meaning shrubbery; the word scrub is obviously related, too. Shrub the drink comes from the Arabic word sharab, wine or the verb shariba, to drink. The sounds/letters a and r of sharab have been transposed to form shrub. This is a common process in language development and is called metathesis (a common example is bird, which is from the Old English brid).
The English words sherbet and syrup are from the same Arabic root.
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