almond
pronunciation
How to pronounce almond in British English:
UK [ˈɑ:mənd]
How to pronounce almond in American English:
US [ˈɑmənd]
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- Noun:
- small bushy deciduous tree native to Asia and North Africa having pretty pink blossoms and highly prized edible nuts enclosed in a hard green hull; cultivated in southern Australia and California
- oval-shaped edible seed of the almond tree
Word Origin
- almond
- almond: [13] The l in almond is a comparatively recent addition; its immediate source, Latin amandula, did not have one (and nor, correspondingly, do French amande, Portuguese amendoa, Italian mandola, or German mandel). But the relative frequency of the prefix al- in Latin-derived words seems to have prompted its grafting on to amandula in its passage from Latin to Old French, giving a hypothetical *almandle and eventually al(e)mande.French in due course dropped the l, but English acquired the word when it was still there. Going further back in time, the source of amandula was Latin amygdula, of which it was an alteration, and amygdula in turn was borrowed from the Greek word for ‘almond’, amygdálē. The Latin and Greek forms have been reborrowed into English at a much later date in various scientific terms: amygdala, for instance, an almond-shaped mass of nerve tissue in the brain; amygdalin, a glucoside found in bitter almonds; and amygdaloid, a rock with almondshaped cavities.
- almond (n.)
- c. 1300, from Old French almande, amande, from Vulgar Latin *amendla, *amandula, from Latin amygdala (plural), from Greek amygdalos "an almond tree," which is of unknown origin, perhaps a Semitic word. Altered in Medieval Latin by influence of amandus "loveable," and acquiring in French an excrescent -l- perhaps from Spanish almendra "almond," which got it via confusion with the Arabic definite article al-, which formed the beginnings of many Spanish words. Applied to eyes shaped like almonds, especially of certain Asiatic peoples, from 1870.
Example
- 1. Almond is a peanut which is good for heart organ .
- 2. Take a bath once a week with the powdered milk and almond oil in warm water .
- 3. Belowthe base spreads a verdant plain of rice , wheat and cotton fields , grape arborsand almond groves .
- 4. They had almond biscuits from an italian bakery on arthur avenue .
- 5. Almond milk is prepared by crushing the almonds without the outer cover and adding water and sugar to it .