Plumcot (1903)

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:28 PM -0400 8/28/03, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)
>1.
>       NEW FRUITS AND FLOWERS.
>               Los Angeles Times (1886-Current File).       Los
>Angeles, Calif.: May 17, 1904.                   p. A8 (1 page):
>    The so-called plumcot, which we may all be eating with gusto in a
>year or two, is a result of the happy union between father apricot
>and mother plum.
>

As opposed to the fruit of the union between father plum and mother
apricot, the apricum.

Curiously, I was just looking at a collection of "portmanteaux" (<
the Jabberwocky term) on the "A Word A Day" site, and it included
this posting:
==========
Learned another portmanteau last night, as I tried a new fruit at a
friend's house: It looked like a peach or plum, but had a
yellow-striped flesh with deep red streaks through it. Our hostess
told us they were called 'pluots' (PLOO-auts): Apparently it is a
hybrid between plums and apricots. Very tasty, they were, and it got
me wondering as to just how many different hybrid fruits that there
are.
-Melissa Langseth
==========
None of these have the nice overlap of most successful blends
("motel", "cremains", "netiquette", "televangelist",...), but at
least "plumcot" is a no-nonsense faute de mieux coinage with
apparently a rich lineage.   "Apricum" seems unlikely for extraneous
reasons, and the "pluots" reported by Ms. Langseth as well as by Herb
and Barry later in this thread works only orthographically if that,
since the stressed vowel bears little relation to the one in "plum".
And "aprium" sounds too much like a large open lobby with trees
serving as a residence for chimps and gorillas.

larry