plum
pronunciation
How to pronounce plum in British English:
UK [plʌm]
How to pronounce plum in American English:
US [plʌm]
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- Noun:
- any of several trees producing edible oval smooth-skinned fruit with a single hard stone
- any of numerous varieties of small to medium-sized round or oval smooth-skinned fruit with a single pit
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- Adverb:
- exactly
- completely; used as intensifiers
Word Origin
- plum
- 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 (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.
Example
- 1. I take a bite of my plum cake .
- 2. We say mrs. white , colonel mustard , and professor plum .
- 3. However , plum ( szilva ) is the most popular flavour .
- 4. Try imagining a plum in your mouth .
- 5. Nectarines are the progeny of a cross between a plum and a peach .