Word.ws English Dictionary

silfium

silfium is the obsolete form of silphium.

Meaning of silphium

Noun

silphium (plural silphiums or silphia)

  1. (historical) A plant, thought to be extinct, used in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome in cooking and as a contraceptive.
    • Of all the mysteries of ancient Rome, silphium is among the most intriguing. Romans loved the herb as much as we love chocolate. They used silphium as perfume, as medicine, as an aphrodisiac and turned it into a condiment, called laser, that they poured on to almost every dish.2022 May 15, James Tapper, “Caesar’s favourite herb was the Viagra of ancient Rome. Until climate change killed it off”, in The Observer
    Synonyms:
    silphion, laserwort

Questions about silfium

What is silfium the obsolete form of?
Silfium is the obsolete form of silphium.

Words near silfium in the dictionary

  1. silexite
  2. silf
  3. silfe
  4. Silfies
  5. Silfieses
  6. silfium
  7. silflay
  8. silgreen
  9. Silguero
  10. Silgueros
  11. Silhan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: silfium (page history and authors); silphium (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “silfium.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/silfium. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.