The warm syrup you pour on a pancakes seems so distant from icy sorbet you’d enjoy in the evening, but they’re close kin.
The Arab word for beverage or something drank is sharab, and is the source for both. It comes up through the Old French sirop or Italian siroppo which was a sugared drink, giving us syrup.
The Arabic root goes up through Persian, then Turkish as serbet to become the dessert sherbet in English. Named before refrigeration, this was a fruit drink that could be made with snow. But when Turkish serbet pass through French or Italian this time, it becomes sorbet.
Our Latin gelare, to freeze or congeal, gives us the other Italian treat gelato, gelatin, and the brand name Jello. The Latin becomes gelee in Old French where we get our less obvious jelly.
Our jam is not about congealing, more about pressing stuff together, and comes from jam the verb. Jelly is congealed, jam is pressed.
Similarly, the Italian treat granita comes from how its made. The ice is crushed into little pieces or granulated. The Latin root granum is grain, and gives us that word in English along with gravy and and the grain-filled pomegranate or seeded-apple.
the journal of gastroetymology 