An often-cited
etymology claims that the term wašíču derives from "he who takes the fat", from Lakota
wašiƞ ("cooking fat") +
cu ("to take"). This etymology/meaning is not present in online Dakota and Lakota dictionaries and is not present or is rejected in discussions of wašíču by academic linguists. Though many Sioux people themselves now report "he who takes the fat" as the original meaning of wašíču, this explanation of the word may be a relatively recent phenomenon. Linguist David R. Roth, writing in 1975 about the etymology of wašíču, reports that at that time Sioux people mostly believed the term wašíču came from
iwašičuƞ meaning talkative or mouthy.{{ cite journal | title = Lakota Sioux terms for white and negro| url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/25667253 |last=Roth |first=David D. Allan R Taylor, responding to Roth in 1976 rejects "mouthy" as the origin of wašíču and further considers and rejects "he who takes the fat", stating that, "It is implausible as a source.. ..since it ignores the necessarily nasalized vowel in
wasį 'bacon' [fat]". Taylor analyses the word as
wa +
šíču where
wa is a particle meaning "something coming from doing an action." He suggests that the original meaning of wašíču can be more readily explained as simply "doer" referring to the colonialists' access to technology unavailable to the Sioux. This closely parallels the etymology of words in other Native American languages meaning "white man."{{ cite journal | title =Note concerning Lakota Sioux terms for white and negro| url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/25667299 ==Wasi'chu in contemporary English language sources==