Pineapple

How to spell pineapple

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pineapple

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pineapple mean?

1. nounA large tropical fruit with a tough, scaly skin, a spiky crown of leaves, and sweet yellow flesh.

Pineapple in a sentence

• She sliced a fresh pineapple for the fruit salad.

• The recipe calls for a ring of grilled pineapple on top of the ham.

Where does pineapple come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Pineapple is a compound of the native English words 'pine' and 'apple', and its history hides a surprising twist. In Middle English, around the 1300s, 'pineapple' (then often written pinappel) literally meant a pine cone, since 'apple' was once a broad word for almost any fruit or rounded growth, and the cones of pine trees fit that description. When European explorers reached the Americas in the 1600s, they encountered the tropical fruit we now know, and because its scaly, segmented exterior resembled a large pine cone, English speakers transferred the old word to it. The cone sense gradually faded, and 'pineapple' came to mean only the sweet fruit. The plant's botanical name, Ananas, still preserves a separate native South American word, which is why most other European languages call the fruit 'ananas' rather than borrowing the English compound.

How the word is built

• pine (the conifer/pine cone)
• apple (fruit), a compound originally describing a pine cone