10 Edible Item Etymologies

In Ethiopia, at a place in Kaffa, one person noticed the wavering movement of goats. Upon inquiry, he found that consumption of a certain bean has affected the movement in goats. Later, humans consumed it. In Islamic Yemen, this bean was later on found and used by the scholars to get active all the night. The word “kehwa” was coined in. In the fifteenth century, the Ottoman elites and scholars alike consumed it. Known as the “wine of Islam,” this commodity was baptized by the Christians. It would later be served in restaurants across the Europe. That also gave the words café in French and caffe in Italian.

The word for the fruit orange owes its origin to Persian word naranj. Naranji is even the name of orange colour in South Asian languages.

When the Americas were colonized, a new bird indigenous to the land was found. Due to its resemblance with guinea fowl, a bird that was migrated from Turkey, the bird was called as turkey. But the Turkish people had never known about it. When the bird came to Turkey, they thought it from India – in Turkey, it is called hindi.

This fruit has so many grains that it was called as “an apple with many grains” (pomme granataum.) Interestingly, the hand grenade resembles it in shape and structure; the etymology behind that explosive device is this sweet fruit. In Spanish, the fruit is called as granada; Spanish city Granada once used to have gardens of pomegranate.

It is an amalgamation of two words, both of which may not be likely associated with it now. Coming from literal meaning “bitter water,” the word is a combination of two words in Nahuatl language, a language spoken by indigenous Mexican.

If chocolate can be bitter water, whiskey is the “water of life.” It is an Irish coinage.

In many languages, it is called as was called by the native tribes of Americas – Ananas. When European first discovered it, they found its resemblance to pine corn, but more than twice of corn’s size, and called it pineapple.

In many languages, the fruit apple has been used interchangeably for the word fruit. The paintings of Adam and Eve eating apple are thus understandable. Potato, in French, is called apple of the ground. The fruit melon is literally “apple” in Greek. Pomegranate is apple with many grains. Peach is from “Persian apple.” Marmalade is “sweet apple.” Pineapple is another case.

It is derived from the Arabic word al-barquq meaning “plum.” Literally derived from “ripening fruit,” the word is rooted from Latin coquere, which has also coined precocious (developed before time.)

The Arabic word al-badinjan has coined in aubergine, brinjal, and eggplant – all refers to this vegetable.