Pomme de terre

Many people who know the French name for the potato—pomme de terre, meaning apple of the earth—might not know that several English words have also derived from the French pomme. For example, the French pomme is the source of pomade, a drink made of pressed apples; the word pomade appeared at the end of the fourteenth century but did not survive into the fifteenth century thanks to the success of its slightly older rival, cider. The French pomme was also the source in the late fourteenth century of pome-dorry, a medieval dish made by coating a meatball with the yolk of an egg; it was the resulting yellow sphere that prompted the second half of the name pome-dorry, a borrowing of the French dore, meaning gilded, which in turn derives from the Latin aurora, meaning dawn, a time of golden light. In the sixteenth century, pomme also gave rise to pomace, the name of the pulp remaining after apples have their juice extracted for cider. Pomme is even the source of several words not related to food or drink: the word pomander, a small box of dried fruits and petals that gives fragrance to clothes, literally means apple amber, while the word pummel, the action of striking someone or something repeatedly, arose from the resemblance in size and shape of a fist to an apple.


 


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