Eureka (word)
The exclamation 'Eureka!' is attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka! Eureka!" after he had stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. (This relation is "not" what is known as Archimedes' principle—that deals with the "upthrust" experienced by a body immersed in a fluid.) He then realized that the volume of irregular objects could be measured with precision, a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse.
Hallaca
According to Adolfo Ernst, the word "hallaca" evolved from the indigenous Guarani language, stemming from the verb "ayua" or "ayuar", meaning "to mix or blend". From there, the construction "ayuaca" (mixed things) devolved to "ayaca" and ultimately to "hayaca" or "hallaca" (using Spanish silent "h" when written). Another version presumes that the word comes from an aboriginal language of the West of the country, whose meaning is "wrapping" or "bojote".The earliest use of the word in the modern sense is in a 1781 document of Italian missionary linguist Filippo Salvatore Gilii.