When the term omelette was first mentioned in a French-English dictionary from the early seventeenth century, it was spelled omelet. Over time, variations such as ormlet, omlet, omlette, and omellette emerged. This word was borrowed from French, where it had a fascinating history. The term was metathesized, with the m and l swapping places, from the French word alemette, which was a diminutive of the word for “knife blade,” alemele. It is believed that alemele was originally a rebracketing of la lemelle (meaning “small plate”) due to confusion with l’amelle. Ultimately, lemelle can be traced back to the Latin noun lamina, which also means “thin plate” and is thought to have roots in the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction stelh, meaning “broad.” The usage of the term omelette saw a rapid increase in the early 2000s, reaching its peak in 2017.
