pomegranate
/ˈpɑmɪˌɡɹænɪt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.93 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The fruit of the Punica granatum, about the size of an orange with a thick, hard, reddish skin enclosing many seeds, each with an edible pink or red pulp tasting both sweet and tart.
noun
A person of British descent, especially one who has (recently) immigrated to Australia; a pom, a pommy.
Australian usage; Colloquial; Derogatory; Obsolete
Example Sentences
- "Here the blue fig with luſcious juice o'erflows, / With deeper red the full pomegranate glows, / The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear, / And verdant olives flouriſh round the year."
- "In the walls of the cells, elevated on seven steps of Parian marble, various statutes stood in niches, and those walls were ornamented with the pomegranate consecrated to Isis."
- "Another goblet! quick! and stir / Pomegranate juice and drops of myrrh / And calamus therein!"
- "The seeds of the pomegranate, for example, were widely used to prevent conception in the ancient world and they are still used in India, East Africa, and the Pacific."
- "Persephone is taken to the underworld by Hades to be his queen. She willingly eats a seed of pomegranate and is forced to spend every winter with her husband in the land of the dead, symbolizing the yearly decay and revival of vegetation. […] In Judaism, the number of seeds in a pomegranate is said to be the exact number of mitzvah, or spiritual duties required of a devout Jew."
- "The pomegranate is a subtropical fruit about the size of a large apple."
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English pome-garnet, pome-garnete, pome garnate, pome granat, pome-granate (“pomegranate fruit; pomegranate tree; pomegranate seeds (?)”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman pome gernate, pomme gernette, Middle French pomme granade, pomme granate, pomme grenade, and Old French pome grenade, pome grenate, pomme grenate [and other forms] (modern French grenade), probably from Italian pomogranato, pomo granato (though apparently first attested later), and then either: * from Italian pomo (“fruit, pome; apple”) + Latin (mālum) grānātum, (mālo)grānātum (“pomegranate”); or * directly from Medieval Latin pōmum garnātum, pōmum grānātum (“pomegranate”), from Latin pōmum (“fruit; fruit tree”) + grānātum (“pomegranate”). Pōmum is possibly ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂po-h₁ém-os (“taken off”) (in the sense of being picked off a plant), from *h₂epó (“away; off”) + *h₁em- (“to distribute; to take”); while grānātum is derived from grānātus (“having many grains or seeds”), from grānum (“grain, seed, small kernel”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵerh₂- (“to mature, grow old”) + *-nós (suffix forming verbal adjectives)) + -ātus (suffix forming adjectives indicating the possession of a quality or thing from nouns). Displaced earlier Old English æppelcyrnel (literally: apple + kernel), itself a calque of the Latin term. The adjective is derived from the noun.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpɑmɪˌɡɹænɪt/
- British English: /ˈpɒmɪ(ˌ)ɡɹænɪt/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
pomegranate-like
pomegranate melon
pomegranate molasses
pomegranate water
sea pomegranate
Socotra pomegranate