ἀμυγδάλη

Greek amygdalē (ἀμυγδάλη) is where the trail starts, though the Greeks probably borrowed it from an earlier language — possibly Semitic, possibly Anatolian. Nobody knows for certain. What is certain is that by the 5th century BCE, almonds were cultivated across the eastern Mediterranean, and amygdalē was the standard Greek word. Hippocrates recommended them. Theophrastus catalogued the tree.

Latin took the Greek word and softened it to amandula, then amygdala. The two forms competed for centuries. Meanwhile, Arabic had its own word: al-lawz (اللوز), with the definite article al- attached. When Arabic-speaking traders dominated Mediterranean commerce in the early Middle Ages, both the nuts and the Arabic article traveled west. Old French almond shows the Arabic al- fused to a shortened form of the Latin — a hybrid word carrying Greek, Latin, and Arabic DNA.

The l in almond is itself a mystery. Greek amygdalē had no initial l. Latin amandula had no initial l. But Arabic al-lawz had one, and it appears to have contaminated the Latin-derived form as the two words collided in medieval Iberian and French markets. The resulting hybrid — something like al-mandula, then almande, then almond — is a word shaped by trade routes, not by any single language.

English adopted almond from Old French by the 13th century. The b that briefly appeared in some spellings (almaund, almound) reflects Norman French pronunciation. The word settled into its modern form by the 16th century, with the l silent in standard pronunciation — though many speakers pronounce it. The almond tree, Prunus dulcis, is native to Iran and Central Asia. The word traveled further than the tree.