Two examples of convergent etymological evolution: catgut and apricot.

Kudos, props, esteem to the first to identify the two threads in each example.

Not sure what you're looking for, but apricot is interesting: from Arabic, from Greek, from Latin. It used to be more like apricock, but through dissimulation, the final velar stop became a dental. Catgut is as far as I know a simple compound word: cat + gut.

zmjezhd is on the right track. Perhaps the inquiry is more accurately called diverge and re-converge. For apricot I have found the following two threads...

Precocious – showing unusually early mental development (not necessarily complimentary). Etymology starts with Latin coquere to cook or, figuratively, to ripen. So an 'early-ripening' fruit or flower would be præ- before + coquere, or præcox. In English prœcox became 'precocious'. It first applied to fruits and flowers, but soon was used figuratively for 'early maturing' persons, and the latter use is now far more common.

Præcox also leads us to today's word, an early-ripening fruit which in Latin was described as, and later named, præcocquum. Traveling east, in Greek it became prekokkia and then berikokkia, and thence the Arabic birquq. The Arabs carried al-birquq ('the birquq') back westward through northern Africa and into the Iberian peninsula, and by metanalysis the al became attached as part of the word: albarcoque, al-borcoq, albricoque, albaricoque and abercoc (O.Sp; Sp.Arab; Port.; Span.; Catalan). Also abricot Fr. and albercoccia Ital.

Do you recognize this fruit? It is the apricot. One new-beginning is that the Arabic al ('the') had become attached. ('Alcohol' was similarly formed from al-kohl.) A second change is that in English the abr- beginning changed to apr-, as in Shakespeare.

Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
– King Richard II, Act 3, Scene 4

No one is sure why the abr- changed to apr-. Perhaps it is because the word was mistakenly thought to derive from aprico coctus, ripened in a sunny place.

That's really cool but I have no idea what it has to do with catgut.

I had the same thought, Goofy, but I thought maybe I am just too linguistically stupid. Catgut, to me, is what we use to suture wounds with.

Catgut actually has no connection with cats. It is/was made from the intestines of sheep. The "cat" part is from the obsolete word kit, meaning a violin.

First -- kudos, praise, props to arnie.

Second -- my apologies to gooofy, kalleh, and anyone else to whom I was unclear.

It begins with a story. A documentary on evolution showed man emerging from Africa and circling the globe, until Vikings met native Americans and the circle was connected, east and west.

That made me think of "apricot" and "catgut" as two cases of re-converging LINGUISTIC evolution.

In the case of "apricot" the two threads are "precocious" directly and "al-precocious" indirectly via Arabic.

In the case of catgut, as arnie notes, one thread is "kit" from the Greek kithara, the non-feline origin. The other thread is that kithara also gives us "guitar..."

Robert,

I know this is a very elementary question, and I apologize for that. However, could you please tell me what you mean by "thread?" Thanks.

Kalleh:

By "thread" I meant to describe a line of descent. For example, from the Greek "kithara" we get guitar by modification. We also get "kit" meaning the box of the violin, hence "catgut." It's interesting to see how the threads can diverge and then re-converge as musical instruments.

[ Note that violin itself has an entirely different lineage:
viola -- tenor violin, 1797, from It. viola, from O.Prov. viola, from M.L. vitula "stringed instrument," perhaps from Vitula, Roman goddess of joy (see fiddle), or from related L. verb vitulari "to exult, be joyful." ]

Gosh, I thought that "catgut" evolved from having oral sutures, which kept verbose people quiet, so people began saying, "Cat gut your tongue?"

Asa, are you sure you aren't a comedian at heart?

I thought that's what you meant, Robert, but I wanted to be sure. That "guitar" link is so interesting.