The fall harvest doesn’t let word lovers go hungry: It yields a cornucopia of etymological roots as well. The origin of the Greek word is unclear. The word’s ending, -kin, is influenced by a Germanic suffix for “little,” also seen in words like napkin. | Westend61/GettyImagesBeet comes from the Old English bete, in turn from the Latin beta. The word was common in Old English but disappeared from the existing record until about the 1400s.