Word for Wednesday: Delphinium

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For our July Word for Wednesday theme, we’ve decided to return to 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. 

Our first flower-themed word this month is delphinium.

Delphiniums – sometimes called larkspur – bloom in June and July and have tall flower spikes. Though delphinium flowers are usually blue, they sometimes also grow in pink, white, and red. They are a member of the buttercup family.

The plant is named for its similarity in shape to a dolphin’s back – think of a dolphin’s fin the next time you see the blue flower spike. Delphinium comes from the Greek ‘delphinion’, from ‘delphin’ meaning ‘dolphin’.


07 Jul 2021
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