I like words. Thanks to Roger L. Simon, I have a new blog to visit. Done with Mirrors posts a “Carnival of the Etymologies” every Thursday with useful information like this:
When the Spanish in the New World encountered a delicious oily tropical fruit the Aztecs called ahuakatl, they called it by the word they knew that sounded closest to that, avocado, which means “lawyer” (literally “advocate”). It hardly redounds to the credit of lawyers, however, that the Aztecs had named the fruit for its shape, and their name for it is the Nahuatl word for “testicle.”
Who knew there was an etymological basis to the joke about lawyers taking Viagra?
Update. An alternate view.