Word for Wednesday: Daisy

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Our Word for Wednesday theme for August is flowers. 

The word flower entered English around 1200 as ‘flour’ (with spelling variants including ‘flur’, ‘flor’, ‘floer’, ‘flor’, ‘floyer’, and ‘flowre’). It comes from the Old French ‘flor’, from the Latin ‘florem’. The word was used in reference to both blooms and grain until the late fourteenth century, after which the spellings ‘flower’ and ‘flour’ were used to differentiate between the two. 

For our first flower, we’ve decided to look at the word daisy. 

A daisy is a common European wildflower that grows on pastures and other grassy areas. It has a yellow centre which is surrounded by white petals that look like rays. 

The word dates to around 1300 and comes from the Old English ‘dægesege’ which means ‘day’s eye’ and is a poetic description of how daisy petals open at dawn and close at dusk. In Medieval Latin the plant was known as ‘solis oculus’ meaning ‘sun’s eye’. 


05 Aug 2020
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