Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Aconite
/ˈækənaɪt/noun
A tall blue-flowered poisonous plant of the buttercup family, also called monkshood or wolfsbane.
The Greek roots
ἀκόνιτον
akóniton
monkshood, wolfsbane
Literally: “without dust, without struggle (disputed)”
Follow a root:ἀκόνιτον1 word
The story of the word
The Greeks said it sprang up where the foam fell from Cerberus's mouths as Heracles hauled him into daylight. They also disagreed about its name: some derived it from ἀκόνη, a whetstone, because the plant grows on bare rock, others from ἀκόνιτος, without a struggle, for how quickly it kills. Ovid has Medea offer Theseus a cup of it. Aconitine holds sodium channels open, gardeners are told to wear gloves, and the advice is not decorative.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
In a sentence
Aconite came up blue and tall at the back of the border.
The coroner found aconite in the curry.