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Another unusual Spanish word I collected in my travels is tascalate.

It's a drink in Chiapas, Mexico and there are Wikipedia articles about it in English and in Spanish.

But it's not in Wiktionary or the DRAE and the Wikipedia article doesn't say where the word comes from. It looks like it could well be derived from normal Spanish morphemes but that doesn't rule out the possibility that it derived from a native language of Mexico.

Does anybody know the etymology of "tascalate"?

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Taking into account that this is a Mexican drink, I would venture to say that it's a compound name in which the last part late comes from the Náhuatl word * ā-tl* (agua), as is the case with xocoatl (chocolate). Of course, this is only a hypothesis. – Gonzalo Medina Nov 23 '11 at 1:11

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In this page there's a theory about the origin of tazcalate (with "z"):

(...) este nombre deriva de la palabra “Tlaxcalli” en Náhuatl que significa Tortilla.

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> El orígen de la palabra “Tazcalate” es todo un enigma. – razpeitia Nov 23 '11 at 5:00

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