Ready to continue our series on flowers? Today we’re going to look at the word lavender.
Did you know that lavender is part of the mint family? I am clearly not well-educated on botany, LOL–that was news to me. The word lavender, given to said plant, is from the 1300s, taken directly from French, which was in turn from Latin. The Latin root seems to have some commonality with lividus, which means “bluish” as well as “livid,” but it also has similarities to lavare, “to wash.” Lavender has been used in washing and perfumes for millennia, so it’s likely no accident that the root words are so similar.
I don’t know about you, but I always wonder which came first with words like lavender, the plant or the color-name. Sometimes, with things like orange, the color was actually first! But definitely not so with lavender. The word for the plant predates the word for the light-purple color by about 300 years, with the color-word popping up around 1840 as an adjective (as in “lavender flowers”) and as a noun all on its own by 1882.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.