Everyday LifeGreek → English
Nectarine
/ˈnɛktəriːn/noun
A smooth-skinned variety of peach.
The Greek roots
νέκταρ
néktar
drink of the gods
Literally: “nectar-like”
Follow a root:νέκταρ3 words
The story of the word
The word began in the 1610s as an adjective meaning sweet as nectar, and only afterwards settled on the fruit. Nectar was what the Olympians drank, paired with ambrosia, which they ate. One long-standing proposal reads νέκταρ as nek, death, plus tar, overcoming, the drink that defeats dying, though the derivation is disputed. The fruit itself is no hybrid: a nectarine is a peach carrying a recessive gene that leaves the skin bare.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1610s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
nectarambrosianectary
In a sentence
The nectarines were ripe enough that the juice ran down her wrist.