kaffir lime

victor steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Tue Jul 26 22:24:49 UTC 2011


A small wrinkly Southeast Asian citrus with a particularly pungent taste
usually goes by "Kaffir lime". The leaves of the plant are also fairly
distinctive--doubled up in succession, nearly similar in appearance to some
cacti. The leaves, rind and juice are in common use for flavoring curries
and soups, although other uses exist in the region as well.

Wiki has an entry, listing a number of variants on the name: combava,
kieffer lime, limau purut, jeruk purut or makrut lime, Kabuyao (Cabuyao).

Both "lime" versions--kaffir and kieffer--are interesting. OED has no entry
for either with "lime", but both k-words are in the OED.

Kaffir is of Arabic origin, has stress on the first syllable and is likely
the worst racial epithet used by English-speaking whites in Africa. But this
is not how it is used with this fruit--in culinary usage, the stress is
usually on the second syllable, although I've heard a switch once in a
while. But even then, the vowel is [a:], not [ae]. There are several other
compounds, with all but "kaffir orange" having an obvious South African
provenance. I don't know the origin of kaffir orange, but it also appears to
be of African origin and unrelated to the lime.

Kieffer is quite a different story. OED entry gives it as a proper name--a
horticulturalist who lend his name to a hybrid pear around 1879. There is no
indication of any connection to Asian citrus.

VS-)

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