The story
- Latin · derived frompraecox“premature, precocious, ripe before time, early ripe”
- English todayprecocious
From Latin praecox (“premature, precocious, ripe before time, early ripe”), from praecoquō (“to ripen beforehand, ripen fully, also boil beforehand”), from prae (“before”) + coquō (“to cook, boil, ripen”). Doublet of apricot.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.