goober

[Of Bantu origin, akin to Kongo or Kimbundu n-guba.]

REGIONAL NOTE   Most Southerners recognize the terms goober and goober pea as other names for the peanut. Goober is related to Kongo or Kimbundu n-guba, "peanut." The word is especially interesting as one of a small stock of African language borrowings brought over by slaves. Most of these words have to do with the food items imported from Africa for the slaves to eat. In this category are gumbo, "okra," which is of Bantu origin, and yam, which is of West African origin. The noun cooter is related to the Mandingo word kuta and the Tshiluba word nkudu, both meaning "turtle." Cooter is still used in South Carolina, Georgia, and the Gulf states to denote the edible freshwater turtle of the genus Chrysemys and, by extension, other turtles and tortoises.

A derivative of the African word nguba, "goober" is a southern U.S. Name for peanut. It's also referred to as a "goober pea."

The Southern nickname for the peanut, goober, came to us by way of Africa, along with the goober itself. The original home of the plant, however, was South America. Early trans-Atlantic explorers brought the peanut from there to Africa, where it spent a century or two before it reached our part of the world. In west-central Africa, where various Bantu languages were spoken, the peanut acquired Bantu names that were the ancestors of goober. The Kongo, noting its shape, called it nguba, the word for kidney in their language. In Kimbundu, a related language, the word was also nguba. And in Umbundu, another related language, it was olungupa.

Many Africans, and many African words, perished on the "middle passage" from Africa to North America in the nearly three centuries of the slave trade. But nguba made it across, perhaps because goobers themselves were brought from Africa along with the slaves. A Louisville advertisement of 1833 announces bags of "Gouber Pea" for sale. Goober by itself first appears in 1834 in the Cherokee Phoenix and Indians' Advocate, published in Georgia, in language attributed to a black speaker: "But he so mean I frade of he, I guess he steal my goober."

Although it never displaced peanut, goober remains widely known and used today, especially in the southern states. It also lives on in the old Civil War song, "Lying in the shadow underneath the trees, Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas!"

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: pod of the peanut vine containing usually 2 nuts or seeds; `groundnut' and `monkey nut' are British terms
  Synonyms: peanut, earthnut, goober pea, groundnut, monkey nut