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WonderWord origin

The word avocado comes from āhuacatl, the fruit's name in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, which is still spoken in Mexico today. Spanish turned it into aguacate, and English took the word from Spanish in the late 1600s.

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Nahuatl is spoken by about 1.7 million people in Mexico, and it has given the world many food words: tomato comes from tomatl, chilli from chīlli, and chocolate is usually traced to Nahuatl as well. Guacamole is āhuacamōlli, 'avocado sauce'. Spanish settlers wrote the fruit's name as aguacate, and English speakers bent it through forms such as 'avogato pear' before settling on avocado; the naturalist Hans Sloane recorded the word in a 1696 catalogue of Jamaican plants. 'Avocado pear' was in turn corrupted to 'alligator pear', a name that stayed common in Florida until the California Avocado Association popularised 'avocado' from 1915. Linguists trace āhuacatl itself back to an even older form, pa:wa, in the ancestor of the Aztec languages.

Türkçe oku
Avokado sözcüğü, Aztekların dili Nahuatl'da bu meyvenin adı olan āhuacatl'dan gelir; Nahuatl bugün de Meksika'da konuşulur. İspanyolcada sözcük aguacate oldu, İngilizce de onu 1600'lerin sonunda İspanyolcadan avocado biçiminde aldı.

Nahuatl dilini bugün Meksika'da 1,7 milyon kadar kişi konuşur ve bu dil dünyaya pek çok yiyecek adı kazandırmıştır: İngilizce tomato tomatl'dan, chilli (acı biber) chīlli'den gelir; Türkçedeki domates de Rumca üzerinden aynı köke uzanır. Çikolatanın kökeni de genellikle Nahuatl'a dayandırılır. Guakamole ise āhuacamōlli, yani “avokado sosu” demektir. İspanyol yerleşimciler meyvenin adını aguacate diye yazdı; İngilizce konuşanlar sözcüğü “avogato pear” gibi biçimlerden geçirerek avocado'ya ulaştı. Doğabilimci Hans Sloane sözcüğü 1696'da Jamaika bitkilerini listelediği katalogda kaydetti. “Avocado pear” adı zamanla bozularak “alligator pear” (timsah armudu) oldu; bu ad, California Avokado Derneği 1915'ten itibaren avocado adını yaygınlaştırana dek Florida'da yaygındı. Dilbilimciler āhuacatl'ın da Aztek dillerinin atasındaki daha eski bir biçime, pa:wa'ya dayandığını düşünüyor.

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Background reading: Avocado
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