Other forms: olives
An olive is the small bitter Mediterranean fruit that is cured for eating and pressed for oil. Green olives, black olives, a bowl of olives.
Green and black olives are the same fruit picked at different ripeness, which surprises most people. Raw olives are inedible; every olive you have eaten has been cured in brine, salt or lye for weeks. Olive oil is one of the most used cooking words in English. Note olive as a colour, a dull yellowish green, and olive branch, meaning a gesture of peace, from the biblical dove and from Greek custom.
1nounoliveA small bitter Mediterranean fruit eaten cured or pressed for oil.
“There were olives and bread and nothing else.”
2noundullA dull yellowish-green colour.
“The walls are a deep olive.”
olive is a fruit, or a colour.
The word travelled a long way: Greek elaiwa gave Latin oliva, and behind the Greek may lie a lost Mediterranean language. English oil comes from the same word, because olive oil was for centuries the only oil anybody in Europe used.
Proto-Indo-European
*loiwom
ber-pro
*wlw — wild olive
Proto-Hellenic
*elaíwā
ett
*𐌄𐌋𐌄𐌉𐌅𐌀
Latin
olīva — olive
Old French
olive — olive, olive tree
Middle English
olyve
English, today
olive
From Middle English olyve, from Old French olive (“olive, olive tree”), from Latin olīva (“olive”), itself from either ett 𐌄𐌋𐌄𐌉𐌅𐌀, Proto-Hellenic elaíwā (compare gmy 𐀁𐀨𐀷, Ancient Greek ἐλαίᾱ), or the same source as those two. In any case, ultimately from a Mediterranean qsb-grc - source, possibly ber-pro wlw (“wild olive”). More questionably, maybe from Proto-Indo-European loiwom (compare cu лои (“tallow”), xcl եւղ (“oil”)). a doublet of oliva and oil. Displaced native eleberġe, literally "oil berry."
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA