Have you ever seen one of those cartoons where the baddie is holding a round, black, smoldering cannonball and letting out a wicked laugh? The very first hand grenades looked a little like those cannonballs, with a small wick pointing out of the top of them. When they were first made as lethal weapons, medieval French soldiers were reminded of another familiar object, and so they named the grenade after it. Can you guess what it was they were thinking of?

 

A. A ball of string

B. A balloon

C. The pomegranate fruit

(Clue: think what would happen if you threw a grenade at someone!)

ANSWER: C!

‘Grenade’ is a shortened version of pome granada, the Spanish term for the pomegranate fruit — it means literally ‘many-seeded fruit’. A ‘grenadier’, which today means a soldier in the first regiment of the royal household infantry, used to mean a pomegranate tree before it meant ‘grenade-thrower’.

It might not have just been the roundness of the fruit that made those medieval fighters choose its name for their weapon. The result of an explosion from a grenade would be lots of blood and guts — a bit like a bright red, squashed fruit and its pips. Ugh!