2945: Raisin and Prune: Why So Specific? Jan 13, 2025

There are two fruits which, when dried, go by other names, grapes → raisins, and plums → prunes [if you can think of more, please write in]. The fact that these go by different names is of linguistic note, but by no means unprecedented. Here, just like how most common types of meats are known by other names to the animal, like say ‘cow’ and ‘beef’, this is from the Norman French names; indeed, modern French for ‘grape’ is ‘raisin’, from a Latin word meaning ‘bunch of grapes’.

What’s different here though is that ‘grape’ and ‘plum’ are not Germanic. The former is from a French verb ‘graper’ meaning “to gather grapes”, and ‘plum’ was the Old English interpretation of the Latin ‘prunus’. Moreover, the Latin name for the genus of cherry trees is ‘Prunus’, such as the sweet cherry, Prunus avium, literally ‘bird’s plum tree’, but this genus also does include peaches, almonds, and of course plums.