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. 

I admit it–I don’t like pickles. In fact, it goes beyond “don’t like.” I genuinely hate pickles. And so, I naturally assume I’ll dislike anything with the word “pickled” attached. 

But what we today call pickles–cucumbers that have been brined–are not what the word originally meant. Pickle has been around as an English word since about 1400, but our definition, specifically pickled cucumbers, is only from 1707. Because, you see, pickle originally meant that brine that something was soaked in for preservation. The origins of the process are a bit murky, but one historian suggests that it was a process developed by a Dutch fisherman after whom the process was named.

When the word appeared in English, it was used not only for brine but also meant “a spiced sauce served with meat.” So the phrase in a pickle, meaning to be in a difficult or sorry situation, actually comes from that meaning, believe it or not! It dates from 1560, referring to that sauce about to be eaten–certainly a difficult spot to find oneself in. 😉 

And here’s a new one for me–round about 1788, it was also used to refer to a troublesome boy. Have you heard that one? The idea is that they were imbued with trouble like something soaked in a pickle (brine). I’m going to have to find an excuse to call someone that! LOL

The word pinpoint was trending recently on EtymOnline.com, so naturally, I had to click in and see what was so interesting. And what I learned was that the way we use it most often–“to locate precisely”–is actually an aeronautic term dating from 1917.

Before that, pinpoint was a noun only, dating from around 1849, and it meant (gasp) “the head of a pin.” I know, I know. You never would have expected that! 😉 But as the field of aeronautics developed, they borrowed the word to mean “place identified from the air,” presumably because they could put a pin in a map, and it was used to ascertain where the aircraft was positioned. Hence, that verb we know so well today, which was aviator slang back a century ago. Phrases like pinpoint accuracy are from WW2 and was still aviator slang, used for precision bombing.