A word whose etymology I once tried to guess. I figured it was more of an ideogram:
alfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfalfa
The a's represent soil, and the l's and f's represent stalks of alfalfa.
I really thought it could have been, and I think it's much more colorful than:
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Spanish, from Arabic al-faṣfaṣa, a green fodder.