Word of the Day:
amaranth
What It Means
An imaginary flower that does not wither.
Any of various herbs of the genus Amaranthus.
The characteristic purplish-red colour of the flowers or leaves of these plants.
Amaranth in Context
“They [the Aztecs] considered the plant sacred and it played a key role in many rituals. The Catholic Spaniards were particularly disturbed by the practice of mixing a little blood from human sacrifices into amaranth dough, baking it into cakes which were then broken up and eaten by the faithful....”
Did You Know?
Borrowed from French amarante, or directly from its etymon Latin amarantus (the word ending influenced by plant names derived from Ancient Greek ἄνθος (ánthos, “a bloom, blossom, flower”)), from Ancient Greek ἀμάραντος (amárantos, “eternal, undying, unfading, unwilting; amaranth; everlasting flower”) (modern Greek αμάραντος (amárantos)), from ᾰ̓- (ă-, the alpha privativum, a prefix forming words having a sense opposite to the word or stem to which it is attached) + μαραίνω (maraínō, “to shrivel, wither”) + -τος (-tos, suffix forming adjectives).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: amaranth (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “amaranth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/amaranth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
