They brought me an avocado

First published 9 May 2010 @ just some words

Ten years ago today, I wrote a post for my (now defunct) blog just some words. Today, by a strange coincidence, I bought an avocado. So here they are: a 10-year-old post and a brand new photo by Tamara, happy together.

Umberto Eco’s essay How to Travel with a Salmon contains a funny if puzzling line:

I asked for a lawyer, and they brought me an avocado.

But why? Original Italian text Come Viaggiare con un Salmone says:

Ho chiesto un avvocato e mi hanno portato un mango.

Avvocato means “lawyer”. Mango, apparently, is the next best thing to avocado. The pun is clearly lost in translation.

Avocado, as well as tomato and chocolate, are of Central American origin. The Nahuatl words āhuacatl, chocolatl and tomatl were adopted by Spanish as aguacate, chocolate and tomate, respectively. In her seminal Chocolate: The Consuming Passion, Sandra Boynton jokes that

it was not until chocolate came to the United States that people began spelling and pronouncing it correctly: CHOCOLATE

— even though the Spanish spelling of chocolate is exactly the same. Most European languages accepted (with some variations) the Spanish versions, while Italians invented their own word for tomato: pomodoro (literally, “golden apple”). Russian employs both words, in slightly different contexts: томат typically refers to the whole tomato plant while помидор is just the fruit. Still, we drink томатный сок (tomato juice).

Nahuatl	āhuacatl	chocolatl	tomatl
Spanish	aguacate	chocolate	tomate
Afrikaans	avokado	sjokolade	tamatie
Dutch	avocado	chocolade	tomaat
English	avocado	chocolate	tomato
Finnish	avokado	suklaa	tomaatti
French	avocat	chocolat	tomate
German	Avocado	Schokolade	Tomate
Greek	αβοκάντο	σοκολάτα	τομάτα
Italian	avocado	cioccolato	pomodoro
Portuguese	abacate	chocolate	tomate
Russian	авокадо	шоколад	помидор, томат
Turkish	avokado	çikolata	domates

More photos related to avocado, chocolate and tomatoes @ Shutterstock.