jojoba

The word 'jojoba' entered English via American Spanish, where it was adopted from the language of the indigenous O'odham people (historically called the Papago) of the Sonoran Desert. In O'odham, the term likely referred to the plant itself. The journey from a local indigenous plant name to a globally recognized term in the cosmetics industry illustrates a classic path of lexical borrowing, where a useful natural product carries its native name into world commerce. There is no further decomposition into meaningful Greek or Latin roots; the word's integrity as a simplex term preserves its origin as a cultural and botanical loanword.

This word is a loanword from Spanish, which in turn borrowed it from the Uto-Aztecan language family (specifically, O'odham or a related language). It is not productively formed from classical morphemes in English.