- plum
[plum 词源字典] - plum: [OE] Plum and prune ‘dried plum’ are ultimately the same word. Their common ancestor was Greek proumnon, a word which originated somewhere in Asia Minor. This was later contracted to prounon, and borrowed into Latin as prōnum. Its plural prōna came to be regarded in post-classical times as a singular, and this is where English gets prune from, but prōna was also borrowed into prehistoric Germanic, and many of its descendants here have had their r changed to l (the two are close together phonetically) – hence German pflaume, Swedish plommon, and English plum.
=> prune[plum etymology, plum origin, 英语词源] - plum (n.)
- Old English plume "plum, plum tree," from an early Germanic borrowing (Middle Dutch prume, Dutch pruim, Old High German pfluma, pfruma, German Pflaume) from Vulgar Latin *pruna, from Latin prunum "plum," from Greek prounon, later form of proumnon, of unknown origin, perhaps from an Asiatic language (Phrygian?). Also see prune (n.). Change of pr- to pl- is peculiar to Germanic. The vowel shortened in early modern English. Meaning "something desirable" is first recorded 1780, probably in reference to the sugar-rich bits of a plum pudding, etc.
