Papaya is a tropical fruit with sweet orange flesh and many black seeds in the center. The tree that grows it is also called a papaya.
From Spanish 'papaya', from a Caribbean Indigenous language, likely Taíno. Europeans adopted the local name along with the fruit when they encountered it in the Americas.
The word 'papaya' is one of many food names we borrowed straight from the Americas, just like 'tomato' and 'chocolate'. Every bite carries a little echo of the Indigenous languages that first named it.
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