Aubergine's Remote Ancestry

For me it has been a busy week or two, and practical pedantry has had largely to go by the board*. But a few days ago a relative who had travelled to UK from Malaysia was talking to me about fruits. "Have you another name for 'aubergine' ?", he asked. " I don't know", I replied. He said "How about 'egg-plant' ?" Oh yes, of course. The conversation turned to the origin of the word 'aubergine'. It sounds French, we both agreed. So I looked it up.

It turns out to be one of those words that have travelled the world as a sort of 'Chinese whisper'. The Sanskrit word for this fruit, perhaps ten thousand years ago, was apparently vatimgana. From this, the ancient Persians derived badingan. The Arabic language turned it into al-badinjan ('al' meaning 'the'), and the Catalans in turn called it alberginia. The later French version of this was aubergine, which we, in the eighteenth century, borrowed into English..

* 'By the board' ? By what board ? Is it the same board that straight dealing has to be above ? After all, in business a new proposition would have to be approved 'by the board': but that might not always be a matter of straight dealing, I suppose. (Actually, 'above board' means 'not under the card table', where you might be hiding your hand.)

Brewer's Phrase and Fable says that when in days gone by a ship's mast was broken in a storm and carried away by the sea, it was said to 'go by the board' - that is, it drifted past the wooden side of the vessel, never to be seen again. So my use of the metaphor in the first line above is a poor one, for the very existence of this blog post proves that pedantry was not lost for ever, but was capable of revival.

Aubergine's Remote Ancestry