pomodoro, noun = tomato
One of the things Christopher Columbus brought back from the “New World” was the tomato. People believed that tomatoes were poisonous at first, but had started to fry and eat them like eggplants (aubergines) by the beginning of the 18th century.
The Italians gave tomatoes the same nickname as eggplant, pomo di moro, which means ‘fruit of the Moors’. At that time, the Moors were often thought to have introduced new products. Over time, pomo di moro changed to pomodoro, which was mistranlated as ‘apples of gold’ (pomo d’oro) by English-speaking historians.
The English word tomato comes, via Spanish tomate, from the Nahuatl word tomatl, which means literally “the swelling fruit”. Interestingly, tomatoes were not commonly eaten in the USA until after 1830.
In Manx, a tomato is ooyl ghraih (lit. “love apple”), tomato or traase. In Irish, tomato is trátaí.
Sources
An Introduction to Language and Linguistics, by Ralph W. Fasold and Jeff Connor-Linton
www.etymonline.com
