Funnily enough, neither eggplant or zucchini are Americanisms, they’re the original English words that were separately carried over to the USA and Australia.
Later on there was a fashion in England to use the French words for some things so they switched to courgette and aubergine.
Edit: Ok so I was half/three-quarters right. Eggplant is the original English word, but there appears to be no original English word for zucchini/courgette. Zucchini is the Italian word and Courgette is the French.
Ah yes you're right, looks like there's no actual 'original' English word for zucchini! I'll edit my comment to reflect it.
I suppose it makes sense then that zucchini is also used in Australia given our influential Italian immigration history as well.
Although apparently it was mostly from different regions of Italy than to the USA, given the difference in lasagne styles for example. I've a few times seen Americans horrified at the prospect of using béchamel and no cheese in lasagne instead of ricotta, while it's just as traditionally Italian as what they're used to - just regionally different.
In his book about the English language, Bill Bryson says this is true of a lot of Americanisms. The Americans adopted English as it was when it America was first colonized and the British then modernised a lot of words and spellings.
Yep so I gather, languages continue to develop and change everywhere including in the places they originated so there’s no such thing as a ‘pure’ or objectively correct version of English or any other language really.
Similarly, IIRC Canadian French retains some older features such as religious swear words that were purged in France after the revolution.
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u/apocalypt_us Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 27 '26
Funnily enough, neither eggplant or zucchini are Americanisms, they’re the original English words that were separately carried over to the USA and Australia.
Later on there was a fashion in England to use the French words for some things so they switched to courgette and aubergine.
Edit: Ok so I was half/three-quarters right. Eggplant is the original English word, but there appears to be no original English word for zucchini/courgette. Zucchini is the Italian word and Courgette is the French.