{"id":3048,"date":"2026-05-18T20:06:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=3048"},"modified":"2026-05-18T21:41:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T19:41:04","slug":"the-mysterious-zucchini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=3048","title":{"rendered":"The mysterious zucchini"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine is sick and asked me to do some shopping for her.<\/p>\n

One of the items on the list was zucchini. So I bought some of this:
\n\"brinjal,<\/p>\n

I know this as brinjal, or eggplant, but also that it has other names.<\/p>\n

It turns out, she actually wanted this:
\n\"baby<\/p>\n

This I know as baby marrow, or courgette, but also that it has other names.<\/p>\n

Clearly I knew zucchini was one of those “other names”, but I applied it to the wrong item. Looking into it more, it seems baby marrow<\/em> is a South African term, which doesn’t appear to be used elsewhere in the world. Courgette<\/em> is British English. And zucchini<\/em> is an American word, also used in Australia. <\/p>\n

So I feel somewhat vindicated. <\/p>\n

Similarly, brinjal<\/em> is South African English, aubergine<\/em> is British English, and eggplant<\/em> the American English.<\/p>\n

I was curious why the American eggplant ranked above the British aubergine in my awareness. It turns out that the Afrikaans name is ‘eiervrug’, literally ‘egg fruit’ (yes, it actually is a fruit, not a vegetable). But I had to look that up, and it seemed an unlikely vector. The rather more likely reason is the ubiquity of the eggplant emoji, used for suggestive texting.
\n\"suggestive<\/p>\n

In a parallel world, people would have been creative enough to find a suggestive use for a zucchini emoji, and none of this would have happened.
\n
\nImages from Wikimedia Commons, 1<\/a>, 2<\/a> and 3<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine is sick and asked me to do some shopping for her. One of the items on the list was zucchini. So I bought some of this: I know this as brinjal, or eggplant, but also that it has other names. It turns out, she actually wanted this: This I know as… Continue reading The mysterious zucchini<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-3048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earth-literature","tag-etymology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3048"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3057,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048\/revisions\/3057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}