bullace

[prettygoodword]

bullace (BULL-is) - n., a wild or semi-domesticated Eurasian plum (Prunus insititia or Prunus domestica insititia) with small fruits growing in clusters that is identified with and distinguished from the damson; another name for some New World muscadine grapes (genus Vitis).


And just to add to the species confusion, in Old French, the ancestor word beloce meant sloe, yet another variety of plum. Before that it was Latin bolluca, of origin unknown but possibly Gaulish origin.

---L.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

The very limited etymological resources at my disposal hint at a connection to the same roots as bollock/ballock in the dim and misty Indo-European (bhel-² as the AHED has it¹) to Germanic language ancestry. The lineages head in the same direction, but nothing I have connects them directly.

¹"To blow, swell; with derivatives referring to various round objects and to the notion of tumescent masculinity."

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Correlating dictionaries, it looks like a very tangled descent, with cousins jumping across lines back and forth.

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Sometimes a round object is... obviously JUST LIKE another round object.