Everyday LifeGreek → English
Pistachio
/pɪˈstɑːʃiˌoʊ/noun
The green nut of a small Asian tree, eaten salted or used in sweets and ice cream.
The Greek roots
πιστάκιον
pistákion
pistachio nut
Literally: “small nut of the pistákē tree”
Follow a root:πιστάκιον1 word
The story of the word
The Greeks did not invent this word, they carried it. Persian pistag reached Greek as πιστάκιον when the nut came west out of the Persian empire, and Latin, Italian and finally English each took a turn at the spelling. Pliny credits Lucius Vitellius with bringing the tree to Italy in the first century AD, and the Romans planted it in Spain soon after.
- How it travelled
- Middle Persian → Ancient Greek → Latin → Italian → English
- First recorded
- 1590s
In a sentence
He picked the pistachios out of the baklava and left the rest.
A kilo of shelled pistachios costs more than the lamb.