Word of the Day:
spignel
What It Means
Meum athamanticum, an ornamental plant in the Apiaceae family found in mountain areas in Central and Western Europe, with roots and feathery leaves used as food and for medicinal purposes.
Preceded by a descriptive word: a plant resembling Meum athamanticum.
The dried, powdered root of Meum athamanticum used as a cooking spice or a medicine.
Spignel in Context
“[H]e wrote a doctor's hand—the hand which from the beginning of has been so disastrous to the apothecary and so profitable to the undertaker: "Take […] of opobalsamum, Indian leaf, cinnamon, zedoary, ginger, coftus, coral, cassia, euphorbium, gum tragacanth, frankincense, styrax calamita, celtic...”
Did You Know?
Either: * an alteration of Middle English spigurnel (“unidentified broomlike flowering plant with medicinal uses”) [and other forms], borrowed from Anglo-Norman spigurnel, spigurnelle, and Anglo-Latin spigurnella, further etymology unknown; or * from spike + nail, because of the shape of its capillary leaves.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spignel (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: “spignel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spignel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
