Small, sweet, orange-colored citrus fruits that are easy to peel, or the plural of tangerine.
From Tangier, a port city in Morocco where these fruits were originally shipped from to Europe. The fruit was named after its place of origin, following the medieval pattern of naming goods after their export location, similar to 'damask' from Damascus.
Tangerines are named after Tangier, Morocco—just like 'champagne' must come from Champagne, France, and 'cashmere' from Kashmir! This geographic naming tells us that tangerines were exotic and valuable enough that Europeans identified them with the distant places they came from.
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