the.com/artichoke heart

means The tender, pale core of an artichoke left over once you've pulled off all the tough, spiny outer leaves — the actual edible prize of the whole operation.

from 'Artichoke' entered English via Italian 'articiocco', itself from Arabic 'al-ḵaršūf', the plant's name in Arabic — one of several Arabic-rooted words (alongside things like 'alcohol' and 'algebra') that traveled into European languages through medieval trade and agriculture. The spelling wobbled wildly as it crossed languages, eventually settling into something that merely sounds like it should mean 'choke of the heart' — it doesn't; that resemblance is coincidence, not origin. 'Heart' simply describes the tender center, by the same logic as the heart of a palm or the heart of a city.