Bananas

How to spell bananas

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bananas

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bananas mean?

1. nounMore than one banana; the long curved yellow tropical fruit.
2. adjectiveInformally, wildly excited, frantic, or slightly crazy.

Bananas in a sentence

• noun

  He packed two bananas in his lunch bag for the train.

• adjective

  The crowd went completely bananas when the home team scored.

• noun

  The recipe needs three ripe bananas mashed into the batter.

• adjective

  The whole office went bananas over the surprise bonus.

Where does bananas come from?

Language of origin: Other

The base word banana reached English in the late 1500s, most likely through Spanish and Portuguese traders who encountered the fruit along the West African coast. They in turn seem to have taken it from a West African language, with Wolof banaana often cited as the source. The plural and inflected forms simply add an English -s, which is why bananas is spelled with single n's throughout and no doubling. The informal adult sense, meaning wildly excited or slightly crazy, grew up in twentieth-century American slang, especially in the fixed phrase 'to go bananas', though the exact reason the fruit came to suggest madness is uncertain. Because the spelling stays so regular, the only real trap is briefly wondering whether any consonant doubles; it never does.

How the word is built

• banana (the fruit, from a West African word)
• -s (plural/inflectional suffix)