Why Do Some People Call Green Peppers ‘Mango Peppers’?

Here's an interesting question from a Grammar Girl podcast listener:

“Hey, Grammar Girl. I have what I think is a familect story, but it could be just a local idiom. I'm not really sure at this point. I grew up in Eastern Ohio where we have a really odd dialect, but my family growing up always used the word ‘mango’ to mean a green pepper. So I didn't know that mangoes were a fruit and a tropical fruit at that. Well, fast forward two years later when my nephew was having his first birthday party, and my husband and I had discovered that mangoes are indeed delicious tropical fruits and that mango ice cream is really tasty, so we ordered an ice cream cake for the family, and we ordered it with mango ice cream, and my father was appalled. He said, ‘I know you eat some weird things but mango ice cream?’ and then I realized that my father was thinking it was green pepper flavored ice cream. Not quite! But I never knew where the word ‘mango’ came from in that sense, and my family has never been able to figure out why we and other people around us called green peppers mangoes."

Thank you! I had heard about this before, but had forgotten about it until I got your message. People in what linguists call the West Midland region do sometimes call green peppers “mangoes” or “mango peppers.” It seems to be most concentrated in Illinois, Indiana, and, like where our caller is from, Ohio. Although it’s occasionally heard in other nearby states too.

The story is that long ago, mangoes seems to have been a term more generally used for fruits that were pickled. And yes, as an aside, peppers are technically fruits, not vegetables.

One theory is that when mangos were first imported from India, they had to be pickled to make the journey, and by association, some people started using the term “mango” to refer to any fruit that was pickled.

A different story uncovered by Indianapolis Star food writer Donna Segal is that in England in the 1700s, “there was a demand for Indian-style pickles like fruit mangos stuffed with spices and kept in a vinegar brine.” But at the time,...

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