Walnute

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A rounded, wrinkled edible seed in a hard shell ; a large tree of the genus Juglans whose fruit is this nut
2. The wrinkled, oily kernel enclosed in a hard shell ; the broad-leaved timber tree that produces that kernel
3. An old spelling of the walnut, meaning the hard-shelled nut with a wrinkled kernel ; the tall tree of the Juglans genus that bears it

Etymology: Walnuts were named for foreigners. The Old English "walhhnutu" combined "wealh", a word for a Celt or a speaker of a Romance language, with "hnutu", meaning nut. The Anglo-Saxons used "wealh" for the Britons they displaced, and the same root gave the names Wales and Cornwall's Cornish neighbours, the Walloons, and "Vlach". The nut arrived in Britain with the Romans, who brought it from the Mediterranean world, so the English called it the nut of the Welsh, or foreign nut. The spelling "walnute", with its final -e, is a Middle English form from the period when English spelling was still unsettled. Over time the final vowel was dropped, and "walnut" became the standard spelling, so the form survives today mainly in historical texts.