Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Acacia
/əˈkeɪʃə/noun
A tree or shrub of a large family with feathery leaves, often thorny and yellow-flowered.
The Greek roots
ἀκακία
akakía
thorn tree
Literally: “thorn tree”
Follow a root:ἀκακία1 word
The story of the word
ἀκακία named the Egyptian thorn tree that produced gum arabic, and the name most likely comes from ἀκή, a point or thorn, though the connection is not certain. Dioscorides describes both the gum and the astringent juice as medicine. Linnaeus took the Greek word for the genus, which now stretches to about a thousand species, most of them Australian and none of them what Dioscorides had in front of him.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
acanthusacme
In a sentence
The acacia flowers for about ten days and the whole street smells of it.