Words of the Month - Speaking of Trees

         This month I have for you the etymologies of a number of words relating to plants, and especially trees.  Not surprisingly, many plant-related words in English go right back to Old English in a straight and unbroken line, so there isn’t really much to say about them.  These include root, stem, seed, leaf, bud, and tree itself.  After all, plants are an absolutely basic and vital part of the environment, so these are exactly the sorts of words that can remain in relatively stable use for many centuries.  But there are also some words that hide interesting secrets in their past.

trunk - entered English from Old French in the 15th c., meaning both “woody stem of a tree” and “torso of a body.”  The definition “box or case” probably comes from the idea of the body as a “case” for organs, rather than because a trunk is made from wood.  Some other trunk-related words include

        (swim) trunks - ca. 1880 from the “torso” definition

        truncheon - ca. 1300 from Old North French, from the idea of a supporting length of wood

        bronco - ca. 1850 from a Spanish adjective meaning “rough, rude.”  And the origin of that may actually be a Latin portmanteau word that meant “knot in wood,” made by blending broccus “projecting” with truncus “trunk.”

bark - entered English ca. 1300 from a Scandinavian language, and is related to the birch tree.  The original OE word for bark has come down to us in Modern English as rind.  (The ship and the dog’s sound are unrelated.  Even when “barking up the wrong tree” it isn’t the tree’s bark that we’re talking about.)

branch - entered English ca. 1300, ultimately from Latin branca meaning “footprint,”  because of the shape.  I picture a bird’s footprint, which really is perfect.  The original OE word for branch has come to us as bough, and we also get limb, which acquired its silent b along the way for no known reason.  I just love that English revels in so many synonyms - and that’s not even getting into the smaller branches like twig, shoot, sprig, spray, tendril, sucker, stick, switch, stalk, withe…

flower - entered English ca. 1200 from Old French, from Latin.  Later in the 13th c. it gained the figurative meaning of “the best or ideal of something,” and thus the very best part of wheat was called flour.  The differentiation in spelling between the two meanings occurred in the late 14th c.  The original OE word for flower has come to us as blossom, and the Old Norse version has come to us as bloom.

pollen - Used as botanical term by Linnaeus in 1751 and soon after used in English, this is from Latin for “mill dust or fine flour.”  It’s related to polenta.

nectar - First used in English in the 1550s as the Greek drink of the gods, the word comes from roots meaning “overcoming death.”  It broadened to mean any “delicious drink” by the 1580s, and got its botanical meaning by about 1600.

fruit - entered English in the late 12th c. from Latin “to enjoy.”  Originally it referred to all plant-based products of the soil, but the sense narrowed to our modern definition around the early 13th c.

        fruition - from early 15th c, originally meant “the act of enjoying”from the Latin.  The definition of “bearing fruit” didn’t come until the late 19th century, and seems to have been one of those cases where speakers didn’t really know the proper definition and assumed the word must have something to do with “fruit.”  Prescriptivists resisted this shift in meaning, and I’m sure I’d have been right there with them at the time, although the new definition has now triumphed completely.

        Now, with all those wonderful green, growing words, are you ready to get out into your garden or the nearest park you can find?

[Pictures: Holding On, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2010 (Originals sold out);

Pleasant to the Eyes & Good for Food, rubber block reduction print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]