Word of the Week – Pansy

Ready to continue our series on flowers? Today, we’re going to look at the word pansy.

The word pansy dates from the 1400s, given as a name to a type of violet (okay, first, I didn’t realize pansies were in the violet family–I’ve already learned something!). Now…where did the word come from?

The second thing I’ve just learned! It’s from the French penser, which means “to think.” Okay, um…why?

Well, we probably all know that flowers have traditional meanings, and this one was apparently associated with remembrance, given to someone to let them know you were thinking about them. I love that. Handing someone a pansy would literally be, in French, handing them a thought.

Of course, if you hear pansy today, you might not think of a flower; you might think of “an effeminate man.” That meaning joined the English language in 1929. We can guess as to why calling a man a flower–something delicate and feminine, traditionally–carried that meaning, but there’s no clear history as to why pansy became the word of choice, rather than rose or violet or any other flower.