Everyday LifeGreek → English
Plum
/plʌm/noun
A soft stone fruit with smooth skin, eaten fresh or dried into a prune.
The Greek roots
προῦμνον
proûmnon
plum, plum fruit
Literally: “plum fruit”
Follow a root:προῦμνον2 words
The story of the word
Greek προῦμνον became Latin prunum, which West Germanic borrowed and wore down into Old English plūme, the r turning to l along the way. The same Latin word reached English a second time through French as prune, so plum and prune are one word arriving by two roads. The Greek itself looks like a loan from Asia Minor, roughly where the fruit was first grown.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → West Germanic → Old English
- First recorded
- Old English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
The plums came off the tree faster than we could eat them.
He landed a plum posting in Lisbon.