Tall, Grande, Venti

My philosopher friend went into a Starbuck's and asked for a tall glass of water.

The barista said, "Do you want a tall, like a Starbuck's tall, or do you want a really tall glass of water?"

Now Starbuck's, as I and other word-nerd customers discovered early on, have introduced some understandable confusion. When you order at Starbuck's, you are supposed to use tall to mean a small 12-oz. drink, grande ("large" in Italian) to mean a medium 16-oz. drink, and venti ("twenty" in Italian) to mean a large 20-oz. drink.

So my friend thinks, "If Starbuck's doesn't know the real definition of tall, we're in big trouble!"

He was telling me this story and, as a word-nerd bonus, it came up that he had deduced that tall must be an Italian word like grande and venti.

A logical assumption, and my friend is logical.  Unfortunately, not true. Tall is from Old English tæl, ġetæl.

All of which goes to show the mischief inherent in redefining good old English words and mistranslating good old Italian words.