Hi, good topic... however, I also thought of 'drovebeam', from Frisian 'druvebeam' where 'druve' = grape Anglofrench 19:31, April 27, 2012 (UTC)
Drove (whose only attested kinword/cognate in another Germanic tung is MHG treip) has naught to do with Frisian druve, or its kinwords: German Traube, grape, bunch of grapes Du. druif , 'grape' . These words all had a long -u- in their oldest forms and so would the OE cognate if it ever existed. But it is no where to be found, as far as I know. Rather drove comes from OE drifan or its Proto-Germanic forerunner *dribhanan, or more rightly *draibhjanan, forerunner of OE drǣfan (> dial. dreave)
It would therefore be misleading to use NE drove in any way that suggests it has some etymological connection to the above words for grape in other Gmc. tungs.
However wineberry is an old Germanic word in deed, and attested in OE, therefore much fitter for grape.
The OE word for 'grape' is acceptable in that eventhough it might have had a long u, there is no trouble in considering an -o- in NE (rather than a -u-): 'can I have some "druves" please?' lol
As for the other meaning od 'drove', what is wrong with homonymy?
I don't understand what you are trying to say. The only Old English word for grape is 'wīn-beriġe or simply beriġe. There is no (recorded) cognate word in OE of Frisian word drúf/druve. Therefore a reconstructed hypothetical drūfe, 'drūfu, 'drūfa (gender seems to vary from one tung to another) would have yielded either druve or drouve (given that ou is the usual outcome of Old English long -ū-) in NE. But I think this is beside the point because it is not recorded at any stage of the English language.
"As for the other meaning od 'drove', what is wrong with homonymy?"
Well the fact that your proposed drove is a homonym of the already existing English drove is just an additional (albeit less important) problem to the fact that you are borrowing (in a sense) a word where none need be borrowed, because wineberry already has a precedent in English for grape, and that the vowel quality of the proposed word is questionable. So 1.) you making up a word 2.) a word already exists for grape in English 3.) you are potentially creating confusion with the pre-existing drove.
What can be gained from this?
On the other hand wīn-trēow , wine-tree already existed in English. Isn't this much more straightforward than drovebeam?
I find 'drovebeam' much more poetic and convenient than "winebeam" - or 'drove' than "wineberry". Why not then cidertree for apple tree, vodkaplant instead of potato? 'Drovebeam' is also likely to have existed in old English (f.b. druva), eventhough we have no records of it and a synonym of 'winetree', which could be a vulgar term used in many germanic languages, but personally I don't see this term being adequate in most costal germanic tongues (e.g. Frisian).
