A Shaddock Is Not a Female Haddock

A few years ago, while sightseeing on the beautiful island of Barbados, we came upon the description of a grand banquet held by one of the island's early sugar barons, which featured among other things the luxury food item shaddock.

"What's a shaddock?" I asked. "A female haddock," one of my travelling companions helpfully supplied.

I laughed at the time, but while I knew she had answered facetiously, I couldn't shake the notion that a shaddock was some type of fish. After all, shad is a fish and so is haddock. By interpreting the second syllable as a k-diminutiva suffix (which I also mention here), mightn't a shaddock be in fact a shad in miniature?

I finally happened upon the answer last week, while reading the "On the Margin" column in the November 22, 1950 issue of The Straits Times. A reader in Jesselton (the old name for Kota Kinabalu in Sabah) had written in to ask what a "pumblenose" was, after reading this passage from Beeckman's 1718 "Voyage to Borneo":

The Country abounds with Pepper, the best Dragons-blood, Bezoar, most excellent Camphire, Pine Apples, Pumblenoses, Citrons, Oranges, Lemons, Water Melons, Musk Melons, Plantons, Bonano's [!], Coconuts, and with all sorts of Fruit ...

A "pumblenose", declared the columnist "Cecil Street", is a pomelo (or Citrus maxima). Then he adds:

In the West Indies, the pomelo is called the shaddock, after a sea-captain of that name who first introduced it into those islands from the East Indies.

This etymology is confirmed by the OED, which has this citation from 1707:

In Barbados the Shaddocks surpass those of Jamaica in goodness. The seed of this was first brought to Barbados by one Captain Shaddock, Commander of an East-India Ship, who touch'd at that Island in his Passage to England, and left the Seed there.

I could have sworn Captain Shaddock was a creation of the cartoonist Hergé, but I guess he was instead the man who lent his fishy-sounding name to a most delectably unfishy-tasting citrus fruit—thereby transcending mortality.

There is much to say about pumblenose, pampelmousse, shaddock and pomelo that must be left for another day. Meanwhile, I have to dash to my zumba class, which my curmudgeonly husband says is a class where zoomers rhumba 'til they're zombies.