avocado

\ \ [17] Anyone tucking into an avocado could well be taken aback to learn that in the South American Indian language from which the word originally came, it meant literally ‘testicle’. The Nahuatl Indians named the fruit ahuacatl ‘testicle’ on account of its shape. The Spanish conquistadors took the word over as aguacate, but before long this became altered by folk etymology (the substitution of familiar for unfamiliar forms) to avocado (literally ‘advocate’ in Spanish). When English borrowed the word, folk etymology took a hand yet again, for in the late 17th century it became known as the alligator pear, a name which survived into the 20th century.