Aphrodisiac

The story of the word

τὰ ἀφροδίσια was the ordinary Greek term for sexual pleasures, the goddess's department rather than a euphemism. Hesiod explained her name from ἀφρός, sea foam, and the birth story grew around that explanation; most scholars now treat the name as pre-Greek or borrowed from the Near East, which leaves the foam as poetry. English picked up the adjective in the eighteenth century, and the noun followed the market for the things it described.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → Latin → English

First recorded

18th century