tobacco (n.)

1580s, tabaco, plant with powerful narcotic qualities, found by Europeans in cultivation in the Americas, from Spanish tabaco, which is in part from an Arawakan language of the Caribbean (probably Taino), said to mean "a roll of tobacco leaves" (according to Las Casas, 1552) or "a kind of pipe for smoking tobacco" (according to Oviedo, 1535). Scholars of Caribbean languages lean toward Las Casas' explanation.

Early German and Portuguese accounts of Brazil also record another name for tobacco, bittin or betum, evidently a native word in South America, which made its way into 17c. Spanish, French, and English as petun, petumin, etc., and which is preserved in petunia and butun, the Breton word for "tobacco."

Many haue giuen it [tobacco] the name, Petum, whiche is in deede the proper name of the Hearbe, as they whiche haue traueiled that countrey can tell. [John Frampton, translation of Nicolás Monardes' "Joyful Newes Oute of the Newe Founde Worlde," 1577]

Cultivation of the plant in France began 1556 with an importation of seed by Andre Thevet; it was introduced in Spain 1558 by Francisco Fernandes.

The spelling shift from ta- to to- in English is from 18c. From Spanish the word passed into the European languages: German Tabak, Polish tabaka, etc. The West Indian island of Tobago was said to have been named by Columbus in 1498 from Haitian tambaku "pipe," in reference to the native custom of smoking dried tobacco leaves [Room].

In fashion, as a shade or color, by 1923. Tobacco Road as a mythical place representative of rural Southern U.S. poverty is from the title of Erskine Caldwell's 1932 novel.