Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Aster
/ˈæstər/noun
A garden plant bearing daisy-like flowers with narrow radiating petals.
The Greek roots
ἀστήρ
astḗr
star
Literally: “star”
Follow a root:ἀστήρ4 words
The story of the word
The flower gives the reason away: a ring of thin rays around a bright centre, which is exactly what a Greek drew when drawing a star. Greek and Roman writers already used ἀστήρ for a star-shaped bloom before Linnaeus fixed the genus in 1753. The same noun sits inside disaster, literally an ill star, and asterisk, a little star.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
asteriskdisasterastronomyasteroid
In a sentence
The asters were the last thing flowering in the border in November.