Acerolas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small tropical fruit resembling a cherry, often red or yellow, that is rich in vitamin C and typically found in warm climates
2. Referring to the tart and juicy fruit of the Malpighia emarginata plant, commonly known for its antioxidant properties
3. Describing a group of sweet and sour fruits from the acerola tree, valued for their nutritional benefits and culinary uses

Etymology: "Acerolas" is the plural of "acerola," the name for a small, cherry-like tropical fruit. The singular was borrowed from Spanish, where "acerola" names the same fruit, and it is a doublet of "azarole," a word for a related Mediterranean fruit, the Crataegus azarolus or Mediterranean hawthorn. Both words descend from a shared Arabic source, which is why English ended up with two separate names that look and sound alike. The shared origin matters because the fruits themselves are quite different. The azarole is a small, apple-like fruit from a hawthorn tree grown in southern Europe and North Africa, while the acerola is a tropical shrub native to the Caribbean, Central America and northern South America. The name travelled to the tropics with Spanish-speaking colonists and was then applied to the newer fruit, so a word that began with a temperate hawthorn ended up naming a fruit from the other side of the Atlantic.