je suis l'avocat du diable

biggest damn avocado I've ever seen.

avocado


For some time, I labored under the delusion that this was Spanish for "lawyer." Made sense, being so close to advocate. But I wondered, often aloud and in company: What is it about the nice soft yellow-green chunks in my salad that suggests an attorney?

Then someone took me aside and informed me that the Spanish for "lawyer" is abogado.

Okay, okay, but hold on.

The first known word for the fruit was ahuacatl, which in the Aztec language, Nahuatl, also means "testicle." I suppose an avocado is shaped sort of like a testicle. (WIII [Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged] says the Aztecs used the avocado as an aphrodisiac, I don't know.) The Spanish rendered ahuacatl as aguacate. It's from that huac/guac that we get guacamole.

So what about the legal aspect? According to AHD [American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language], some Spanish speakers rejected aguacate in favor of the familiar avocado, which was indeed at that time Spanish for "lawyer." Why was it changed to abogado? Maybe because lawyers didn't want to be associated with those nice soft chunks.

If Spaniards couldn't be bothered to pronounce ahuacatl, you know English speakers couldn't-- they picked up the lawyer-resembling version. So did the French: avocat du diable means "devil's advocate," but it could also mean "devil's avocado." And I'll bet a lot of Francophones have wondered, down through the years, what these morceaux verts, gentils et mous have to do with les hommes de loi.

Another French word for the fruit is poire d'alligator. In English, but roughly the same token, the fruit is sometimes called "alligator pear." AHD says this derives from the notion that avocado trees grow in places infested with alligators. Doesn't it seem more likely that the leathery green rind of the avocado fruit makes it look like a pear-- or, all right, a testicle-- in alligator clothing?

I don't suppose I have to tell you that alligator comes from the Spanish el lagarto, the lizard. In English, it was alligarta or alligarto-- ending in a vowel-- until the First Folio version of Romeo and Juliet, where it swims into our ken spelled Alligater. (Romeo tells Juliet he knows where he can get some poison: from an apothecary whose shop is decorated with a stuffed alligator "and other skins of ill-shaped fishes.") This was like potato becoming tater; hollow, holler; and fellow, feller. But I guess it looked literary, at least once -er became -or, because even the French picked it up.

However (according to Harrap's Slang Dictionary, English-French/French-English), the French do not toss around "See you later, alligator" in literal translation. It's "À tout à l'heure, voltigeur." (As of 1984.) A voltigeur is an acrobat.


from Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory (pp. 30-31) by Roy Blount Jr.