Almond

How to spell almond

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce almond

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does almond mean?

1. nounThe edible oval seed of a tree related to the peach, eaten as a nut or ground for baking.

Almond in a sentence

• She scattered a handful of almond slices over the salad.

• The recipe calls for ground almond instead of flour.

Where does almond come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Almond travelled a long way before settling into English. The Greeks called the nut amygdale, a word of uncertain earlier origin that also gave us the anatomical term amygdala, the almond-shaped cluster in the brain. Latin reshaped amygdale into amandula and amindola, and Old French carried it forward as almande or almande. Along the way the spelling picked up an initial 'al-', most likely by confusion with the Arabic definite article al-, which prefixed so many words that entered medieval European trade through Spain. English took the word in the 1300s, and the silent 'l' that survives in the modern spelling is the very letter many writers forget when they reach for the word.

How the word is built

• al- (from Arabic article fused on)
• mond (from Greek amygdale: almond)