> Curry is a South Indian word referring to vegetables originally
Not exclusively to vegetables. It originally comes from 'kari', meaning 'blackened' or 'burnt', and referred to cooked vegetables and meat.
Not exclusively to vegetables. It originally comes from 'kari', meaning 'blackened' or 'burnt', and referred to cooked vegetables and meat.
For example, curry veppu (curry tree) is pronounced with the regular r sound in the standard dialect, but in some dialects, it is instead kariyaappu with the dental flap r sound (the 't' in American English 'atom').
The kari for 'burnt', 'blackened' is also related to 'karuppu' for 'black', which is pronounced with the regular 'r' (like curry) instead of the dental one.