Of course the title of this post sounds rather like a bizarre product offered by an online sex shop. The truth is, that it has rather to do with a Christmas spice: it´s about vanilla and the words related to it.

When the Spanish started to export a kind of orchid plant from tropical America to Europe they needed a name for it and they chose vainilla.

This Spanish word basically means “small sheath; small hull” and is the diminutive of the Spanish word vaina which means “sheath; seed pod; hull”.
The word origins from the Latin word vagina for sheath which of course also names the female sexual organ.

Tags: etymology vanilla vagina hull pod sheath Spanish Latin

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