mango
/ˈmæŋɡoʊ/noun
Tropical tree producing sweet edible stone fruit
From Proto-South Dravidian *mām (mango tree) + Proto-South Dravidian *kāy (unripe fruit).
Lineage
*mām
*kāy
The story
Long before mango reached an English fruit bowl, South Indian speakers were effectively saying “mango-tree fruit”: *mām meant “mango tree,” while *kāy meant “unripe fruit.” Tamil joined them as மாங்காய் (māṅkāy), and the word then traveled through the busy linguistic ports of South and Southeast Asia, probably touching Malayalam and Malay mangga before Portuguese traders carried it westward as manga. English recorded mango for the fruit in the 1580s, turning it into the form familiar on supermarket labels today. In 1793, Captain William Bligh brought mango trees from Timor to British gardens in Jamaica and St. Vincent on his second voyage—a botanical sequel to the more famous breadfruit expedition. So every mango carries a tiny map of maritime Asia: tree plus fruit, passed from Tamil speech through Portuguese sails into English.
Modern usage
An emphatic compliment for something exceptionally desirable, especially the fruit itself.
- Heard in
- informal internet slang
- See
- Urban Dictionary entries praising mango as exceptionally good