apricot
/ˈeɪprɪkɒt
/- According to an EU ruling, marmalade can contain only citrus fruit, not apricots or other soft fruit.
- They're generally very fruity, and can have the subtle tastes of apples, peaches, apricots and melons.
- Unsprayed rose petals can be used to decorate desserts or cakes, or incorporated with peaches and apricots into fragrant jams.
- It can be woven into a carpet using its many colours - white, lavender, mauve, indigo, apricot and pink - or a single colour may be selected to contrast or complement alyssum, dianthus and lobelia.
- Modern hybrids come in every colour from white and apricot to deep plum.
- Prunus armeniaca, family Rosaceae.
- All summer long I battled successive invasions by the marauding black squirrels that lived in the graceful apricot tree outside our window.
- We have one particular pair of Rosellas that stay in the apricot tree constantly, and I wake every morning to their light chatter outside my bedroom window.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Portuguese albricoque or Spanish albaricoque, from Spanish Arabic al 'the' + barqūq (via late Greek from Latin praecoquum, variant of praecox 'early-ripe'); influenced by Latin apricus 'ripe' and French abricot.
The Romans called the apricot the malum praecocum or ‘the apple that ripens early’. The second part of the Latin name, meaning ‘early-ripening’, is also the root of the word precocious (mid 17th century), now used of children but originally used to describe flowers or fruit that blossomed or ripened early. Over the centuries praecocum gradually mutated in a multilingual version of Chinese whispers. It passed into Byzantine Greek as perikokkon, to Arabic as al-birquq, to Spanish albaricoque, and to Portuguese albricoque. In the 16th century the word was adopted into English from Portuguese in the form albrecock. The modern spelling was probably influenced by French abricot, and perhaps by Latin apricus ‘ripe’.