Other forms: melons
A melon is the big round sweet fruit with orange or green flesh inside. A slice of melon, watermelon, ripe melon.
Ripeness is judged by smell at the stem end and by weight rather than by colour, because a melon does not sweeten after picking — the sugar is fixed at harvest. It is mostly water, which is why it is served cold. Note that the Greek behind it means apple-gourd.
1nounmelonA large round sweet fruit with soft flesh.
“On hot days, a slice of cold melon is so refreshing.”
melon is a fruit.
Latin melonem comes from Greek melopepon, from melon, an apple, plus pepon, ripe.
Proto-Indo-European
*pekʷ-
Latin
melonem
Old French
melon
Middle English
meloun
English, today
melon
Built from
From Middle English meloun, melon, from Old French melon, from Latin melonem, from Latin melopeponem, from Ancient Greek μηλοπέπων, from μῆλον (“apple”) + πέπων (“ripe”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA