Ready to continue our series on flowers? Today we’re going to look at the word lily.
Lily is a very OLD word. As in, our English word goes all the way back into Old English with various spellings, and it traces its roots not only to Latin and Greek but even further back. Our spelling is taken from Latin, but pretty much every Western language has a similar word from either Latin or Greek, all meaning the same thing. The flower, and also its other associations with “white, pure, lovely.” The universality of the word is probably due to its inclusion in biblical texts.
Lily of the valley is a direct translation of the Hebrew in Song of Solomon, though it was first applied to the plant we think of today only in the 1500s. Interestingly, lily pad is an Americanism, dating from 1834 (I didn’t realize it was so specific!).
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.