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Where does the word 'ebony' come from?

'Ebony' is one of the few modern words to come almost directly from ancient Egyptian. The ancient Egyptian word for it was 'hbny'. Try saying 'hbny' out loud and see what it sounds like. Although we do not know exactly how 'hbny' would have sounded if it were spoken by an ancient Egyptian, we can still hear similarities between our pronunciation of it and the modern word 'ebony'.