anchovy: [16] English acquired anchovy from Spanish anchova (the word first turns up as an item on Falstaff’s bill at the Boar’s Head: ‘Anchovies and sack after supper … 2s 6d’, 1 Henry IV 1596), but before that its history is disputed. One school of thought holds that it comes via Italian dialect ancioa from Vulgar Latin *apjua, which in turn was derived from Greek aphúē ‘small fry’; but another connects it with Basque anchu, which may mean literally ‘dried fish’.
1590s, from Portuguese anchova, from Genoese or Corsican dialect, perhaps ultimately from either Latin apua "small fish" (from Greek aphye "small fry") [Gamillscheg, Diez], or from Basque anchu "dried fish," from anchuva "dry" [Klein, citing Mahn].
