Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Agaric
/ˈæɡərɪk/noun
Any of various gilled mushrooms, and formerly a bracket fungus used in medicine.
The Greek roots
ἀγαρικόν
agarikón
a tree fungus
Literally: “the Agara fungus”
Follow a root:ἀγαρικόν1 word
The story of the word
Dioscorides says the fungus was named after Agara, a place in Sarmatia, and most modern etymologists treat that as a guess he inherited rather than a fact. For centuries agaric meant the larch bracket fungus sold by apothecaries as a purge, not anything with gills. Only later did the name slide to the gilled mushrooms, and it survives in the genus Agaricus, which includes the button mushroom in every supermarket, and in fly agaric, the red toadstool of illustration.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
In a sentence
A fly agaric had come up under the birches, scarlet and spotted white.