Most etymology dictionaries nevertheless state that the Spanish word is almost surely from Arabic because of the "al-". However, there is evidence in Spanish supporting the contrary argument that the "al-" in this case was probably solely Spanish and that the corque part of the Spanish word descended from classical Latin without Arabic intermediation (and to repeat, the evidence in Arabic is that there was no such word in Arabic). The ancient Romans used cork and called it, among other names, cortex (literally: "bark").