plummy

\PLUMM-ee\

adjective

1 a : full of plums

b : choice, desirable

2 a : having a plum color

b : rich and mellow often to the point of affectation

One day, a couple jobs ago, a co-worker and I stood around bored, deciding what food represented each of our fellow employees. He decided I should be a plum. I am getting that uncomfortable feeling that I've written this story in another blog, but I don't have the patience to look, and I don't much care anyway. It simply eases my mind that the reader know I am well aware of the potential that I'm repeating myself.

Anyway, I was pleased with this designation. I don't know what it was about a plum that stuck me so right. I guess I was happy a plum is not a widely appreciated fruit, it doesn't often make it into juices or sorbets or desserts, even among the other stone fruits it gets little play. Something about a plum suggests—

I remember now. It was something I wrote about a Japanese plum. Don't remember the word. Still don't feel like looking.

—the mysteries inherent in under-appreciation. I'm not often in the mood for a plum nor do I regularly eat them, but when I do I'm pleasantly surprised. I guess maybe I communicate something similar in my personality. I'm not popular or well-liked, but there's something there. Like a plum I somehow fall under the radar, and I like it like that.

All of this, of course, somewhat refutes the above definition of PLUMMY as choice and desirable. Neither would I describe myself as "full of plums" or "plum colored."* My voice may sometimes come out as rich or mellow, but not quite affected. So, while I may equate myself with the ideology of the plum, I wouldn't call myself PLUMMY.

But enough about me.

The plum's dried version, the prune, does not have an accompanying adjective. I thought PRUNY might be a word (as in: fingers out of a bathtub) but it is not so. Alas.

*Although, this reminds me that I once told my mother that purple was my favorite color (20 some odd years ago) and she refuses to believe otherwise.