Thread by @matt_boot_

let's take a moment to appreciate the wild ride that the German word _Pommes_ "French fries" has been on 🍟

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it's a shortening of the phrase _pommes frites_, which is a borrowing from French.

_frites_ is the feminine plural past participle of _frire_ 'to fry'. 🍳

but what are _pommes_?

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here it's understood to be short for _pomme de terre_, "potato" 🥔 ...

literally "apple of the earth" — cf. Dutch _aardappel_ "potato, earth-apple."

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[Van Gogh, "De Aardappeleters" - "The Potato Eaters"]

on its own, French _pomme_ is the standard word for "apple." 🍏

it goes back to Latin _pо̄ma_, the *plural* of neuter _pо̄mum_ "fruit" that has been re-interpreted as a feminine singular.

(something similar happened with sg. _opera_ "work," historically a pl. of _opus_)

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in Latin, _pо̄mum_ doesn't even mean "apple"!

it was used to refer to lots of different kinds of fruits. the more precise Classical Latin word for "apple" was _mālum_ 🍎

_pōmum_ also gives us the 1st part of the word "pomegranate".

pōmum grānātum = "seedy/grainy fruit"

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so, next time you order _Pommes_ = "🍟", consider the long journey of semantic narrowing that has brought you to this point.

etymologically, you are asking for "[fried apple-]fruit [of the earth]"!

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