noun
- Chiefly British. eggplant.
- a dark purplish color.
noun
- a tropical Old World solanaceous plant, Solanum melongena, widely cultivated for its egg-shaped typically dark purple fruitUS, Canadian, and Australian name: eggplant
- the fruit of this plant, which is cooked and eaten as a vegetable
-
- a dark purple colour
- (as adjective)an aubergine dress
“eggplant,” 1794, from French aubergine, “fruit of the eggplant” (Solanum esculentum), diminutive of auberge “a kind of peach,” variant of alberge, from Spanish alberchigo “apricot” [OED]. Klein derives the French word from Catalan alberginera, from Arabic al-badinjan “the eggplant,” from Persian badin-gan, from Sanskrit vatin-ganah. As a color like that of the eggplant fruit, it is attested from 1895.