…but not for sun-dried tomatoes? Or is there one and I just don’t know it?
There’s no single word for a dried apricot, peach or apple either. My WAG is that plums and grapes have been dried and sold for a lot longer than any other kind of fruit or vegtable.
I don’t know if it’s of any help, but both “raisin” and “prune” are the french words for the non-dried fruit.
Complete guess : both were originally imported dried from France?
Aren’t all the table words for meat also from the French?
Cow/Beef
Baby cow/Veal
Pig/Pork
Not all, of course, by a long shot. And in this particular case, the name of the fruits are different, but the english name of the dried fruits are the french name of the fresh fruits. It might by completely by chance. Or maybe not. For instance, I don’t know if plum trees grow easily is the UK, but there are many of them in south-western France (actually, this area is particularily famous for prunes, rather than plums, though I don’t know if it was true in the past), along with a lot of grapes, there was an intense trade between with region and England during the middle ages (Since Guyenne was a fief of the king of England), and its during this period too that french vocabulary made its way into english.
It might also be that dried fruits were a delicacy more likely to be found in England on the table of the french-speaking nobility than on the table of the english speaking peasantry.
It’s still a wild guess, though…
For some reason, I read “table words for food” instead of “table words for meat”.
You can add sheep/mutton to your list, by the way.
And don’t forget the Britishism Sultanas for what we americans call Golden Raisins.
In the USA, prunes aren’t prunes anymore. The correct name, FDA inspired?, is dried plums!
Maybe folks didn’t know where prunes come from? :smack:
There’s a hilarious account of the changing of the name from “prunes” to “dried plums” in Dave Barry’s book Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway. Apparently you can’t just call prunes “dried plums” because, yes, the U.S. Government was afraid people would be confused. (Marketers apparently wanted to change the name. I suspect to get away from associations with old people and “regularity” issues.)
I never looked, but I guess there’s now “dried plum juice”. :smack:
I’ve heard the term craisins for dried cranberries.
Or maybe “dried plums” trips off an aging Baby Boomer’s tongue ever so much more easily than “prunes”. 
I believe craisins is in fact a trademark of Ocean Spray.
What, has no one here ever heard of a raisin bush or a prune tree? 
They grow very well and crop heavily, however, we don’t really have a climate suited to sun-drying the ripe fruits (you might just about get away with it on some of the earlier plum varieties, in a good year).
My WAG for the name differences is that Prunes and raisins are quite significantly different in colour, flavour and texture from their fresh counterparts the plum and the grape; dries apples, pears, apricots etc retain (IMO) more of the characteristics of the fresh item. - This holds true even after the dried fruits have been reconstituted by soaking in water or syrup. I realise this is a bit subjective, but prunes and raisins will not taste again very much like plums and grapes no matter what you do.
I’ve heard of a raisin bush, but it’s a completely different plant (actually, there are several different plants/trees that are thus named) and has nothing to do with actual raisins
The FDA has to be PC at all costs! :rolleyes:
A rose by any other name would smell … like a rose.
So, by the studiousness with which everyone is avoiding my OP, can I assume that there is no special word for a sun-dried tomato?
If you’d like to keep playing, how about answering this: other than prunes and ©raisins, are there any other special names for dried fruit?
Not in English, as far as I know. But in Italian, regular tomatoes are pomodoro, while sundried tomatoes are pumate.
I’ve heard the phrase pomodoro secchio (sic?) in Italian. Pumate is obviously more concise, in addition to answering the OP.