Great things may come from small beginnings.

The word acorn doesn’t come from ‘oak’ and ‘corn’, as is popularly supposed, but from the Old English ‘aecern’, meaning berry or fruit. The tree genus Acer comes from the same root.

Mighty oaks from little acorns growBefore oaks were mighty they were first either great, tall, sturdy or even just big. Examples of early variants of ‘mighty oaks from little acorns grow’ are found in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, 1374,

“as an ook cometh of a litel spyr” [a spyr, or spire, is a sapling]

Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia, 1732:

“The greatest Oaks have been little Acorns.”

and in an essay by D. Everett in The Columbian Orator, 1797:

“Large streams from little fountains flow, Tall oaks from little acorns grow.”