Oh my goodness, I must say that I really like the word cățel (cut-sell) in Romanian for a number of reasons.

The most common definition of this word is a puppy, as in a baby dog. A lot of people use it to refer to adult dogs too, although in that sense it’s kind of “cutesy” or baby talk, because in Romanian it sounds like a diminutive.

It can also refer to a baby wolf (pup), which I’ll get into here in a moment.

But the other standard translation for cățel is what in English we call a “clove” of garlic, as in one of the individual pieces of garlic broken off from the larger bulb or intact, single garlic plant. Therefore when you’re cooking in Romania, the recipe quite often calls for a “puppy” or two of garlic :P

Yet another reason I really like this word is due to the Latin etymology, in this case coming from the word catellus. In standard Latin this would’ve indeed referred to a baby wolf and not a puppy, or baby dog. Certainly the Romans were quite fascinated with wolves.

But the ancients really liked to play around with words, especially ones that sounded or looked similar. Although the words for adult animals (lupus/canis) were quite different, the word for baby wolf (catellus) was quite similar to that of a baby dog (caniculus) and so these two got mixed and matched for poetical and comedic effect. Indeed, today there’s a wide variety of words in modern Romance languages that were derived from these root words.

Therefore in Romanian the “purest” definition cățel would indeed be “baby wolf” (pup) but the most common usage is “baby dog” (puppy).

Fun bonus fact: the word in Spanish for a clove/cățel of garlic is “diente”, which means “tooth”. And you know what? It actually looks like a tooth. I like it :)

…ut est cista cistula cistella et canis catulus catellus, quod in pecoris usu non est.

-Marcus Terentius Varro