The apricot is an Armenian or Persian fruit, and was known to the Romans later than the peach. It is spoken of by Pliny and by Martial.
Plin. N.H., lib. xv. c. 12.:
"Post autumnum maturescunt Persica, æstate præcocia, intra xxx annos reperta."
Martial, lib. xiii. Epig. 46.:
"Vilia maternis fueramus præcoqua ramis,
Nunc in adaptivis Persica care sumus."
Its only name was given from its ripening earlier than the peach.
The words used in Galen for the same fruit (evidently Græcised Latin), are προκοκκια and πρεκοκκια. Elsewhere he says of this fruit, ταυτης εκλελειφθαι το παλαιον ονομα. Dioscorides, with a nearer approach to the Latin, calls apricots πραικοκια.
From præcox, though not immediately, apricot seems to be derived.
Johnson, unable to account for the initial a, derives it from apricus. The American lexicographer Webster gives, strangely enough albus coccus as its derivation.