Question: Why do we call that vegetable an eggplant?

Take your time.

Ready?

And, The Answer Is:

The Answer:

Unlike “tomato,” I never associate this word with an image of the thing itself, so far apart is the word from the food.

It’s easier to think of it as that big purple thing that’s parmesianed or, in a Middle Eastern restaurant, babaganooshed.

Etymologically, this vegetable has an odd history, beginning with the fact that it’s technically a fruit that we serve vegetable-style.

Initially cultivated in ancient Persia, it spread to India, and then to Africa and Spain. Europeans called it an eggplant when they first encountered it in the 18th century.

They weren’t being eccentric.

The plant comes in several varieties, and the one they first saw had small, whitish, egg-shaped fruits.

Today, the English call it aubergine, a modification of its Arabic name; Indians know it as brinjal, which evolved from the same source.

But anyway you slice it - usually thin - I call it mmmm good.

(Source: The THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY, edited by C. T. Onions)

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