prompter: Hi there, can you please give me a good explanation why pineapple is called pine-apple though pine trees have nothing to do with pineapples?

assistant: The word "pineapple" comes from the Spanish word "piña", which means pinecone. The fruit that we now know as pineapples was originally called "piña" by Spanish explorers who first encountered it in the Americas. European explorers who later encountered the fruit saw its resemblance to pinecones and began calling it "pineapple" in English.

The pineapple plant that produces the fruit we know as pineapples is scientifically known as Ananas comosus. This is the same species that was originally brought to the Caribbean and South America by Spanish explorers. While there are other types of plants that are sometimes called "pineapple", they are not the same as Ananas comosus.

So, while the name "pineapple" may have originated from the Spanish word for pinecone, it now specifically refers to the fruit produced by the tropical plant Ananas comosus.

prompter: Why is it that the English language calls the fruit ”pineapple” instead of some veriety of the word ”ananas”, like most of the other European languages?

assistant: Great question. What we now known as a *pine cone*, which is the seed-bearing fruit of the pine tree, was the first fruit to be called *pineapple*. It was so-named from the practice of medieval botanists to refer to any unfamiliar fruit on a tree that was thought to resemble the firm, roundish apple in some way by the name *apple*.

English explorer Captain John Smith was one of the earliest to record the word *pineapple* for the tropical fruit in 1624. It may be that Smith recalled the things that grew on pine trees when he saw the fruit, but more than likely it was so-named by the practice of calling a newly-encountered fruit *apple*. The captain was obviously unaware of the name *ananas* for the fruit, which was already in use in English at the time.

assistant: The English language adopted the word "pineapple" from the Spanish word "piña" when the fruit was first introduced to Europe by Spanish explorers in the 17th century. At the time, there was no standardized system for naming new plants and animals, so different languages used different names for the same thing based on their own unique linguistic and cultural traditions.

The word "ananas" is used for the fruit in many other European languages, including French, Italian, and German. This is because these languages borrowed the word from the Tupi-Guarani language spoken by indigenous people in South America, where the pineapple originated.

However, English speakers continued to use the term "pineapple" even as the fruit became more widely known and studied. The name "pineapple" may have been more familiar to English speakers and easier to remember and pronounce than the word "ananas" from a less familiar language. Over time, the name "pineapple" became established in English and is now widely recognized as the name for this tropical fruit.

assistant: The etymology of the pineapple originates all the way back to medieval Europe, where the pronged consistency of the rind was often compared to the jagged scales on pinecones.

prompter: I had a hunch it would have something to do with actual pine cones and their visual similarity. However, with the pineapple being a typically tropical plant, how did people back in medieval Europe have access to it? How was it imported?

assistant: Pineapples first came to Europe in the 16th century, brought by none other than that intrepid traveller and explorer, Christopher Columbus. He discovered pineapples in Guadeloupe in 1493 and brought them back to Spain. They had been cultivated in Guadeloupe by the population who loved their tasty and juicy sweetness, and it is no exaggeration to say that Europeans went wild for this exotic delicacy! A British colonist, Richard Ligon, who had a sugarcane plantation in Barbados, wrote at the time that the pineapple was, ‘far beyond the choicest fruits of Europe’.

From the moment that they were introduced to Britain in the 15th century, it became immediately clear that they could not be cultivated in the unsuitable British climate. People still tried though, and for nearly two hundred years there were many failed attempts to grow the fruit. They were finally able to succeed by using ‘hot-houses’ in the 18th century. They were also famously difficult to transport from the colonies without spoiling, therefore due to their rarity, they became insanely popular and a status symbol in the 16th and 17th centuries.

assistant: Yes, pineapple is indeed a tropical plant, which is native to South America and not European countries.

The pineapple was first introduced to Europeans by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to the Americas in 1493, where, according to some sources, he first described it as a big pine cone-looking fruit.

The credit for introducing the pineapple to Europe is usually given to the Dutch navigator and merchant, Pieter de la Court, who is said to have brought back the first pineapple from a voyage to South America in 1597. However, it is also possible that other explorers, traders, and missionaries may have introduced the fruit to Europe around the same time.

Pineapples were considered as something luxury and expensive in Europe due to challenges of transporting and cultivating them, and reserved this status for several centuries.