Monday, September 1, 2014

Word of the Day

bletting
 \ BLET-ing \, noun;  
1.the ripening of fruit, especially of fruit stored until the desired degree of softness is attained.

Quotes:
… the strange fruit was not good if eaten before ageing and bletting , when its taste became like chocolate.
-- Leslie Forbes, Waking Raphael , 2003

This " bletting " is the intermediate stage between maturity and decay, and is that yellowish woolliness of the fruit familiarly known as "mellowness."
-- Dr. Robert Brown, "A Fruit," Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly , 1889

Origin:
Bletting  comes from the French word blet  meaning "overripe." It entered English in the 1830s.

Dictionary.com