You can think of artichoke as one tight green bud made of thick leaves packed one over another, sitting on top of a tall thistle. Nothing about it is open yet. To eat it you take it apart slowly, leaf by leaf, until the soft middle is all that is left. That picture — a layered green head of a plant, and the dull grey-green of its outer leaves — is what the other uses of the name hang on.
From the word’s history
The packet's Wiktionary etymology traces the word from Arabic al-ḵuršūf through Andalusian Arabic, Old Spanish alcarchofa, Occitan artichaut and Lombard articioch into English — a borrowed sound, reshaped at every step, which is why the English spelling looks like art + choke by accident.
依照本次提供的維基詞典字源，這個字從阿拉伯文 al-ḵuršūf 出發，經過安達魯西亞阿拉伯語、古西班牙文 alcarchofa、奧克語 artichaut、北義大利的 articioch，才進到英文。一路上只是聲音被借來借去、每一站都被改一點，所以今天的拼法看起來像 art 加 choke，其實只是巧合。
Wiktionary, "artichoke"
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。