muckefuck | WotD: pomelo; shaddock (Reply)

die Pampelmuse
de pompelmoes
la pampelmusa
l'aranja grossa
la pamplemousse, le pomélo
y siadog, y pomelo
an pomaló
pomarańcza olbrzymia
왕귤 (王橘)
柚子 yòuzi

Notes: Pomelos and grapefruits were initially not distinguished botanically, so there's a boatloads of terminological confusion here. Grapefruit has been borrowed into several languages for the latter (notably German and Dutch), perhaps in acknowledgment of the fact that the US is responsible for a third of world production. (Confusingly, Pomelo has also been borrowed into these languages to designate various hybrids of shaddock and grapefruit.) European French still uses one term with "vrai" or "véritable" being added to specify reference to the original species; pomélo is common in North America. In Catalan, a pomelo is a "big grapefruit" and in Polish it is a "giant orange". This has a parallel in 왕귤, Sino-Korean for "king [mandarin] orange", which however is not among the dozen or so current alternative Chinese names for the fruit. Just to round out the confusion, however, the characters of the common Chinese name are used in Japan and Korea for a completely different citrus fruit, the yuzu (known in China as 日本柚子 "Japanese pomelo" or 香橙 "fragrant orange").

I've never been a grapefruit fan, but somehow the taste of a pomelo is just different enough for me to enjoy in moderation. I can't remember why the Chinese find them auspicious, I just know that it doesn't seem like the Spring Festival without one in the house. We picked ours up Saturday morning at Tai Nam, which was a spectacle of glorious chaos. I can't imagine how the coming storm is going to play havoc with everyone's holiday plans.