pōmum grānātum

The Latin pōmum grānātum means 'seeded apple' — pōmum (fruit, apple) and grānātum (having seeds, from grānum, seed or grain). The Romans were being literal. The fruit is, in fact, full of seeds — between 200 and 1,400 of them per fruit, each wrapped in a jewel-colored sac of juice. The word traveled from Latin into Old French as pome grenate, and English adopted it by the 1300s.

The fruit itself is far older than the Latin name. Pomegranates were cultivated in Persia and the Caucasus region by 3000 BCE. They appear in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, and Greek mythology. Persephone ate pomegranate seeds in the underworld, binding her to Hades for part of each year — the origin myth of winter. The fruit decorated the robes of Jewish high priests. Islamic architecture used pomegranate motifs extensively.

The word 'grenade' comes directly from the pomegranate. The French grenade — originally a small explosive shell — was named for its resemblance to the fruit: round, filled with small fragments that scatter on detonation, like seeds. The Spanish city of Granada takes its name from the fruit as well. A single Latin compound gave English a breakfast fruit and a weapon, and Spanish an entire city.

The pomegranate had a quiet few centuries in the West, overshadowed by apples and oranges. Then, in the early 2000s, studies on antioxidants made it a 'superfood.' POM Wonderful, founded in 2002, turned pomegranate juice into a billion-dollar product. The fruit that had been sacred to Persians, Greeks, and Jews became a health-food marketing category. The seeds are the same. The pitch is different.