Sloes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The small, dark purple fruit of the blackthorn shrub, often used in making jams or liqueurs
2. A type of wild plum that is typically sour and is commonly harvested in late summer or early autumn for culinary purposes
3. The bitter fruit produced by a spiny tree, valued for its tart flavor in beverages and desserts

Etymology: "Sloes" is simply the plural of "sloe", the small, dark blue fruit of the blackthorn, a shrub that grows thickly in hedgerows. The fruit is so astringent that it is rarely eaten raw, which is why it is usually picked in autumn after the first frosts and turned into gin, jam, or sloe-flavoured liqueurs. The word goes back a very long way. Its ancestor was Old English "slā", which in turn descends from a Proto-Germanic form meaning "bluish", a reference to the colour of the fruit's bloom. That same ancient root gave the word a dash of colour that has nothing to do with taste: the fruit is named for its hue, not its sourness. Sloe has a close relative in "sliwa", the Polish word for plum, which is a doublet of the English word. Both trace back to the same ancestor, so the two languages independently preserved a common name for the same family of fruit.

Synonyms: plums