"Sam scarlet, sugar, caftan-green, velvet" - what is it? - "Watermelon", - they will answer in Russia. "Kavun", - they will say in Ukraine, Belarus, as well as in the south-western regions of Russia. Where did these two completely different words come from in closely related Slavic languages? The fact is that they are borrowed from different languages: watermelon goes back to Persian, and kavun-through Turkish to Arabic, and in both languages both these words meant a completely different plant (and its fruit) - melon. At the same time, all etymological dictionaries note that, denoting melon, the Persian word harbuza literally translated as "donkey cucumber". However, here is what L. V. Uspensky wrote in his book "A Word about Words": "Following the generally accepted etymologies, I told readers of the journal Nauka I Zhizn about the origin of the word" watermelon "in 1965. But soon after I received a letter from Tashkent. M. Davron informed me that, in his opinion, "kharbyuz" should be understood not as "donkey cucumber", but as"donkey cucumber". In the Iranian languages, he wrote, the word "donkey", when joined to other nouns, can give them a kind of amplifying or magnifying meaning. So, "harmush", i.e. page 104 "donkey-mouse "means " rat"; "harsang" - "donkey-stone "means" block of stone". Therefore, "harbusa" should also be understood as "cucumber the size of a donkey", "cucumber". Consultations with prominent Iranian scientists confirmed this report" (L. 1971). The word harbuza meaning "melon" has been preserved in modern Persian, as well as in the Hindi language that borrowed it. Having undergone certain phonetic transformations, it has entered many languages-but with different meanings. So, in the meaning of "watermelon" it exists in the Turkic languages (Turc. karpuz, kypch., kum. harbuz, tat. karbuz - according to the" Etymological Dictionary of the Russian language " by A. Preobrazhensky, which contains other variants, probably earlier-for example, in Tatar ... Read more