Kolokynth

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A trailing Mediterranean plant of the gourd family whose small, very bitter fruit has been used as a purgative
2. The bitter apple, a desert vine bearing a round yellow fruit that was once prized in medicine as a strong laxative
3. Citrullus colocynthis, a creeping plant with a hard, bitter melon-like fruit historically used in traditional remedies

Etymology: The Greek "kolokynthē" originally named the gourd family, and the bitterness of one member gave the word its most memorable sense. The fruit of the plant the Romans called "colocynthis," known in English as the bitter apple, is intensely bitter, and its pulp was prescribed as a strong purgative in classical and medieval medicine. Its English form, "colocynth," came into use in the late Middle Ages through Latin, keeping the Greek shape almost intact. The word's ancestry is less certain. Its origin is not clearly Indo-European, and it may come from a Mediterranean language that Greek absorbed. Modern Greek still uses "kolokythi" for the familiar squash and courgette, so the same root names both a food and a medicine, and the bitter fruit has been a poison or a cure depending on the dose.