I am proud to present the second Wil’s World of Words Friday Fun Quiz, including a special bonus question on the fruit of South-East Asia.

I was pleased to see this article on the BBC website yesterday because I have fond memories of making jokes about funnily shaped fruit when I was a child.

The fruit and vegetables in this article are considered ugly just because they are strange shapes and sizes. In English we also have a fruit called ‘ugli fruit’ which is a little like a grapefruit and doesn’t look ugly at all!

There were two particularly interesting words in this article. The first was ‘wonky’

Return of the ‘wonky‘ vegetables – but will people buy them? (BBC NEWS)

‘Wonky’ is a great adjective to describe something uneven or at a strange angle. We could describe the Leaning Tower of Pisa as ‘wonky’. It’s quite an informal word to use so it was strange to see it in a news article. The second interesting word in the article is ‘mottled’:

Curly cucumbers, crooked carrots and mottled mushrooms – odd-looking fruit and vegetables are making a comeback as 20-year-old EU rules are lifted. (BBC News)

The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary has a great definition of it:

mottled- marked with areas of different colours which do not form a regular pattern

What unusual fruit do you have in your country?