• drupe •
Pronunciation: drup • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Fruit with a pit or stone, such as peaches, plums, olives, cherries, etc.
Notes: Here is a category of fruit we are all familiar with but few are acquainted with its name. It comes with two adjectives, drupaceous "having the characteristics of a drupe" and drupiferous "bearing drupes". For some reason the diminutive, drupel, refers to berries like blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries.
In Play: The fruit of the almond tree is a drupe, containing a stone with a hard outer hull within which lies a seed which, when fresh, tastes just like a maraschino cherry (personal experience). The name of the clingstone peach refers to a peach with a stone that is difficult to remove from the flesh.
Word History: Today's Good Word was taken from Modern Latin drupa "stone-fruit", from Classical Latin drupe "wrinkled olive", which Latin borrowed from Greek dryppa, a reduction of drypepes "tree-ripened", created by combining drys "tree, oak" + pepon "ripe". Greek metathesized PIE deru-/doru- "solid, wood, tree" to create drys, as did English for its tree, Albanian for its dru "wood, tree" and, probably, Irish trom "heavy". Pepon came from PIE pekw-/pokw- "to cook; digest; ripen", remnants of which we see in Sanskrit pacati "cooks, bakes" and pacyate "ripens", Russian peku "I bake", Serbian pekao "baked", Welsh pobi "baking", Breton pober "baker", and Cornish peber "baker". (Now let's thank Susan Maynard for spotting the interest in today's compelling Good Word and sharing it with us.)