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!).

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.

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.

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

The word dates from around 1530s, though etymologists aren’t entirely sure where it came from. Their best guesses are that it’s a variant of coronation, either because the flower looks a bit like a crown or because it was frequently used to make flower-crowns…or perhaps it’s instead based on its traditional pink color. In French, carnation means “complexion,” a variation of the Italian carnagione, which means “flesh colored.” The Italian comes, in turn, from the Latin carnationem, ultimately from caro, meaning “flesh.”

That’s quite a trail of petals to follow back…but the Oxford English Dictionary casts doubt on it with one simple fact: not all carnations are pink and hence “skin colored.” 😉

But whether or not it is the first history of the English word, we can’t deny that it is a history of it–some of the first recorded uses of carnation are most definitely concerning human flesh, in a very particular way: the incarnation (taking on of flesh) of Christ.

I don’t know about you, but I’d never drawn a connection between the flower and the word incarnation!

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

The word itself is very literal: it’s Mary’s Gold. The Mary, not surprisingly, is the Virgin Mary, and the flower in question to which it was applied was not what we Americans think of as the marigold, but rather the calendula. Now, it has been called this since the Middle Ages, with written records dating back at least to the 1300s. But…why was the flower called this?

First, the color. It’s golden. 😉 That part’s pretty obvious. But why was it associated with Mary?

This history is a bit more complex and absolutely lovely. You see, the traditional marigold has a long life, blooming from early spring to late fall…a season referred to in the Middle Ages as “Ladytide,” because it encompassed most of the Marian feast days in the Church calendar. The color gold had long been associated with Mary, used to depict her reign as “Queen of Heaven.” Art almost always portrayed Mary with some sort of gold.

So then, when it came to decorated churches and altars for these feast days, gold was wanted, as were fresh flowers…so naturally, people chose golden flowers, and the marigold was the most abundant.

There’s also a tradition that states that when the poor couldn’t afford to bring gold coins as offerings to the church, they would bring marigolds instead. This is more stories-told than facts we can trace to original sources, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

As we go through the last full month of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere, that is), I thought it would be fun to look at the histories of some of my favorite things about summer–flowers!

Let’s start with daisy.

The word, not surprisingly, dates back to Old English, and it is literally “day’s eye.” Why? Because the petals open with the sun and close at dusk. And it’s a very traditional name for the flower. Even the Latin word, solis oculus, means “sun’s eye.”

Now, Daisy is also a traditional nickname for Margaret…and if, like me, you wonder why, for that we can blame the French. 😉 You see, the French Marguerite was their name for the flower but also a traditional girl’s name. When English borrowed the name, they also eventually borrowed the translation–but since we had another word for the flower, we just used that as the nickname.