4 ms·

I also like how the color was named after the fruit, not the other way around. (there's a similar example with "escalator" and "escalate"; the latter was named

• waqf 10y ago
  Well, of course it is. Who would name a fruit after a colour? It only seems surprising because the colour is more mentally salient, so there's a cognitive bias toward assuming it's the original (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic). By the way, "pink" is also named after a plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_%28flower%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_%28flower%29).
  • Chinjut 10y ago
    Well, some fruits are sort of named after colors. "blueberry", "blackberry", "Red Delicious", etc. But point taken.
  • jimmaswell 10y ago
    something close is "greens"
• jacobolus 10y ago
  Though “escalate” is a kind of funny one. “Scale” (meaning climb up) and “escalade” (a military attack of a fort by soldiers climbing up ladders leaning against the walls) are both from the Latin words for ladder/climb. “Escalator” was the trade name of the first commercially successful version of the moving staircase idea at the turn of the 20th century. The company otherwise made elevators, so “escalator” was some kind of invented mashup of “elevator” and “escalade”. There were various competing products under other names, but “escalator” was memorable and easy to understand in relation to the word “elevator”, so their name became the generic term.