Episode 279: Carat

(Piano music) 

Hello and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go! 

There is an ancient fruit that grows in Greece and it's the food that sustained thousands of Greeks, including my grandparents, during the second world war. It's called ΧΑΡΟΥΠΙ (charoupi). In ancient Greek it was called ΚΕΡΑΤΙΟΝ (cerateon) meaning 'little horn' because, it looks like one! The ancient Greeks discovered that the weight of each seed of the fruit never changes so they used it as a measure of weight against precious metals and stones. The Romans used to measure their gold with it as one seed was 1/24th of their gold siliqua coin. They, of course, used the Latin word for it that passed on to the French and came to English in the 15th century but the measure for gold purity remained 24 ΚΑΡΑΤΙ/CARAT

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