Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Artemisia
/ˌɑːrtɪˈmiːziə/noun
A large genus of aromatic bitter herbs and shrubs including wormwood, mugwort and tarragon.
The Greek roots
Ἄρτεμις
Ártemis
Artemis, goddess of the hunt
Literally: “the plant of Artemis”
Follow a root:Ἄρτεμις1 word
The story of the word
Ancient sources disagree about which Artemis is meant. Pliny credits Artemisia of Caria, the queen who built the Mausoleum for her husband; others take it straight from the goddess, who was invoked in childbirth, since these herbs were women's medicine. Absinthe comes from one species, vermouth is named through German for another, and Artemisia annua yielded artemisinin, the antimalarial that won Tu Youyou a share of the 2015 Nobel after she found the extraction method in a fourth-century Chinese text.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
artemisininArtemis
In a sentence
Silvery artemisia holds the dry end of the border together all summer.