Originating in Brazil and subsequently introduced to the rest of the world, the peanut has been known in English by a variety on names. First it was called pinda, a word dating back to the late seventtnth century and deriving from the Congolese mpinda, the name of an African legume resmbling the peanut Next, beginning in the mid eighteenth century, the peanut came to be known as ground-pea and ground-nut, so called because it grows, like all legumes, close to the earth. In the early nineteenth century, the word peanut itself emerged, but it soon acquired a rival in the form of goober, a word that derives from nguba, a name given to the plant by West Africans after it was brought to their continent by Portuguese slave traders. Today, goober continues to be commonly used in the United States, and remains one of the few words of African origin retained by English. Peanut, however, has become the usual name in the rest of the English-speaking world even though it is only half accurate: the peanut is a kind of pea but not a nut—in fact, the “shell” encasing the edible seeds more closely resembles the pod of a pea than the shell of a nut.
An oily herb of the legume family, Arachis hypogaea, whose seeds are consumed for their nutritional value and whose oil, derived from the seeds, is used in cooking.
The leguminous plant native to warm regions bears a seed known as the groundnut. As the flowers of this plant fade away, they instinctively find solace within the earth, causing the formation of the pod to occur beneath the surface, hence earning the name groundnut. The pod, possessing a pale yellow hue and exhibiting a wrinkled texture, displays a propensity for effortless cracking, thereby unveiling a cluster of 2 to 3 brown nuts concealed within. Typically, these nuts undergo a brief roasting process, enabling the subsequent removal of their brown skins through a simple act of gentle friction.