The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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‘holm-oak’ tree, but Arag. le(n)cina means ‘acorn’, and as a corollary to this
we find encino in American Spanish as the name of the tree. The original
name of the ‘peach’ has generally remained masculine, as the standard prisco,
used for one variety, with the earlier form priesco surviving in some areas,
such as Soria; cf. also the Ast. piesco/piescu and the forms pérsico, pérsigo
(learnèd?). Here Aragonese has a similar presiego, but also the fem. presiega
‘quince’ (is another example to be seen in the Asturian placename Priescal ?).
Peaches can be classified, as ‘freestone’ (abridero) or ‘clingstone’ (durazno,
Moz. durachno), both masculine for tree and fruit; for the latter variety there
are also the fem. pavía (fruit) and albérchiga/albérchigo, from the Arabic
form of PERSICU. (Other masculines outside our scope are albaricoque (Moz.
barcoc), from Arabic, and damasco, which in parts of Spain and in South
America means ‘apricot’; cf. Arag. damasquino for a kind of peach.)
j) As compared with Spanish, Portuguese differs in forming the name of
the tree by the addition of -ARIU or -ARIA, the gender, strangely enough, being
determined by that of the fruit. (The only case of a tree name in -o matching the
Spanish one is castanho, which is flanked by castanheiro, while castanheira,
which matches the gender of castanha, refers only to the wild tree; cf. also
(a)zambujo/(a)zambujeiro for the ‘wild olive’, with fruit azambuja.) As in
Spanish, the standard word for ‘apple’, maçã, is taken from MAT(T)IANA, with
POMU, POMA surviving (or readopted) in special uses, thus pomo for any ‘pome’,
especially an apple (e.g. for the ‘forbidden fruit’, ‘apple of discord’, ‘Adam’s
apple’), ‘pommel’, ‘woman’s breast’, and poma anciently for ‘apple’ and now
for ‘pomander’, ‘woman’s breast’, the two having a slightly different range and
distribution of meanings from the Spanish words. As in Spanish also, MELU
only appears in compounds; firstly there is the Gal. miligranda (DCELC) and
OPtg. melgrada, mirgada, Transm. milgrada (REW) ‘pomegranate’ (the