apricot [M16th] The Romans called the apricot the malum praecocum or ‘the apple that ripens early’. The second part of the Latin name, meaning ‘early-ripening’, is also the root of the word precocious [M17th], now used of children but originally used to describe flowers or fruit that blossomed or ripened early. Over the centuries praecocum gradually mutated in a multilingual version of Chinese whispers. It passed into Byzantine Greek as perikokkon, to Arabic as al-birquq, to Spanish albaricoque, and to Portuguese albricoque. In the 16th century the word was adopted into English from Portuguese in the form albrecock. The modern spelling was probably influenced by French abricot, and perhaps by Latin apricus ‘ripe’.