aubergine

\ \ [18] Etymologically, the aubergine is the ‘anti-fart vegetable’. That was the meaning of its ultimate source, Sanskrit vātinganah, so named because it did not produce intestinal gas.

\ \ This was borrowed into Persian as bādingān, and reached Arabic as (with the definite article al) al-bādindjān. It then made its way with the Moors into the Iberian peninsula: here it produced Portuguese beringela (source of brinjal [18], an Indian and African English term for ‘aubergine’) and, with the definite article retained, Catalan alberginia. French turned this into aubergine and passed it on to English. In British English it has gradually replaced the earlier eggplant, named after the vegetable’s shape, which American English has retained.