Sapote
/səˈpoʊti/noun
A tropical fruit from several related trees in the sapodilla family, with sweet flesh and large seeds.
Did you know?Sapote comes through Spanish from Nahuatl tzapotl, a broad indigenous word for soft, sweet fruits, showing how colonial languages preserved a name tied to Mesoamerican food culture.
Etymological Timeline
Classical Nahuatl
Nah
tzapotl
“a soft, sweet fruit; a general term for several fleshy tropical fruits”
16th Century
Spanish
zapote
“a borrowed word for tropical fruits of this type in the Americas”
17th–18th Century
Spanish/English
sapote
“an adapted spelling and pronunciation used for New World fruit names”
19th Century
English
sapote
“a tropical fruit name adopted into English from Spanish”
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