Started from this question on reddit about the gender of nouns in Romanian, I thought this might be interesting enough to also post here:
Interesting fact… vânătă is also a feminine adjective meaning dark blue with a bit of violet, basically the color of the eggplant.
The eggplant is also rarely called “pătlăgică vânătă” (“dark blue pătlăgică”), where “pătlăgică” (feminine noun) means either the eggplant plant or the tomato plant.
From here on, the tomato (“roșie” in Romanian, feminine noun) is also rarely called “pătlăgică roșie”, which means “red pătlăgică”. As you can figure out, “roșie” is also a feminine adjective meaning red.
Therefore, it is possible that the “vânătă” and “roșie” vegetables are feminine because of the “pătlăgică” which is feminine.
Now I see that pătlăgică comes from Turkish patlican, which means… eggplant.
Also, the dark blue bruise you get when you get hit hard is called “vânătaie” in Romanian.
