Peach

How to spell peach

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce peach

What does peach mean?

1. nounA round, sweet fruit with soft yellow or pink flesh, fuzzy skin, and a single hard stone.
2. nounInformally, a person or thing regarded as especially lovely, pleasant, or admirable.

Peach in a sentence

• She sliced a ripe peach over her morning yoghurt.

• The new receptionist is an absolute peach, always cheerful and helpful.

• The orchard sells a different variety of peach every August.

• Their seaside cottage was a real peach, tidy and full of light.

Where does peach come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The name traces back to the Latin phrase malum persicum, literally 'Persian apple', because the Romans believed the fruit had reached them from Persia, even though it originally came from China. The Latin shortened to persica, which softened in Late Latin and passed into Old French as pesche. English borrowed it in the 1300s and the spelling settled as 'peach', losing the older 's' sound that survives in related forms across Europe. The same Persian connection lingers in the botanical name Prunus persica, which the fruit still carries today. The cheerful informal use of 'peach' to mean a wonderful person or thing grew up much later, drawing on the fruit's reputation for sweetness and a flawless, downy skin.

How the word is built

• peach (from Old French pesche, ultimately Latin persica 'Persian apple')