1. Any of various chiefly tropical trees of the genus Diospyros, having hard wood and orange-red fruit with sweet usually soft pulp, especially D. kaki, native to East Asia, and D. virginiana, native to the eastern United States.
2. The fruit of any of these trees.
[From Virginia Algonquian pessemmins, putchamins (as recorded in English-language accounts of Virginia from the early 1600s by John Smith and others) : pesse-, of unknown meaning + -min, fruit, berry (from Proto-Algonquian *-min; compare -mi·n in Unami xi·mi·n, persimmon).]
(click for a larger image)persimmon
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Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices
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