The routes by which trade, encounters and learning reshaped English.
bergamot (n.)
Collection
Words That Travelled
Bergamot is a small citrus fruit with a fragrant, bitter oil in its rind.1 Where its name comes from is not settled.
The word first named a pear. In the 1610s English used bergamot for an especially fine pear, and the Online Etymology Dictionary traces that name to the Turkish bey armudu, the bey’s pear, reshaped in Italian to sound like the town of Bergamo.2
For the citrus, which came into English in the 1690s, the same dictionary takes the town itself: Bergamo, in northern Italy.2 Merriam-Webster gives the citrus the Turkish pear instead.1
Both dictionaries find the Turkish pear in the word. They disagree about whether the citrus owes its name to the pear or to the town.
The tea smelled of bergamot.