Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Anemone
/əˈnɛməni/noun
A spring-flowering plant of the buttercup family, or the flower-shaped sea creature named after it.
The Greek roots
ἄνεμος
ánemos
wind
Literally: “windflower”
Follow a root:ἄνεμος2 words
The story of the word
Greeks connected ἀνεμώνη with ἄνεμος and said the flowers opened when the wind blew. Some scholars argue instead that the Greek name is a reshaping of a Semitic word tied to Adonis, whose blood was said to have stained the petals red, and the question is not settled. The sea anemone took the name in the 1770s for its ring of petal-like tentacles.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1550s
Same family
anemometeranemophilous
In a sentence
Anemones came up along the ditch a fortnight before anything else.
The anemone closed around the shrimp in one movement.