英语词汇pomegranate的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

pomegranate; garnet; grenade. Commonly called “Chinese apples” in America, pomegranates, “the fruit of the ancients,” take their name from the Latin for “many-seeded apple.” The thick-skinned red fruit, about the size of an orange, is divided into numerous cells inside, each containing many seeds en- cased in a crimson, juicy pulp. When the fruit is eaten raw, it is broken open and the red flesh is sucked out. Today in the Ori- ent when a newly married couple reaches their new home, pomegranates are broken at the doorway, their crimson-coated seeds signifying both the loss of virginity and an omen that many offspring will come of the marriage. A number of other words derive from the pomegranate with its red skin and seeds. Our grenade, a weapon first used in the late 16th century, comes from the French grenade, a shortening of French pomegrenade, for pomegranate. It was originally filled with grains or “seeds” of powder and thus facetiously named after the many-seeded fruit. Today the word is used in hand grenade, which isn’t filled with grains of powder anymore, but can create a scene of car- nage as bloody as any shattered pomegranate where it explodes. The military grenadier, originally for a soldier who threw gre- nades, evolved in much the same way from the French shorten- ing, as did the term grenadine for the drink made from the fruit. But the garnet stone, its color similar to the flesh of the fruit, was given its name by the Romans, the Latin granatum (from Punic granatum or Punic apple: the pomegranate) be- coming grenat in Old French and shifting by metathesis to gar- net in English over the years.

词汇	pomegranate
词源	pomegranate; garnet; grenade. Commonly called “Chinese apples” in America, pomegranates, “the fruit of the ancients,” take their name from the Latin for “many-seeded apple.” The thick-skinned red fruit, about the size of an orange, is divided into numerous cells inside, each containing many seeds en- cased in a crimson, juicy pulp. When the fruit is eaten raw, it is broken open and the red flesh is sucked out. Today in the Ori- ent when a newly married couple reaches their new home, pomegranates are broken at the doorway, their crimson-coated seeds signifying both the loss of virginity and an omen that many offspring will come of the marriage. A number of other words derive from the pomegranate with its red skin and seeds. Our grenade, a weapon first used in the late 16th century, comes from the French grenade, a shortening of French pomegrenade, for pomegranate. It was originally filled with grains or “seeds” of powder and thus facetiously named after the many-seeded fruit. Today the word is used in hand grenade, which isn’t filled with grains of powder anymore, but can create a scene of car- nage as bloody as any shattered pomegranate where it explodes. The military grenadier, originally for a soldier who threw gre- nades, evolved in much the same way from the French shorten- ing, as did the term grenadine for the drink made from the fruit. But the garnet stone, its color similar to the flesh of the fruit, was given its name by the Romans, the Latin granatum (from Punic granatum or Punic apple: the pomegranate) be- coming grenat in Old French and shifting by metathesis to gar- net in English over the years.
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