Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Bulb
/bʌlb/noun
A rounded underground storage organ of certain plants, or anything shaped like one.
The Greek roots
βολβός
bolbós
onion, bulbous root
Literally: “onion”
Follow a root:βολβός1 word
The story of the word
Greek βολβός named an edible bulb, probably the tassel hyacinth, which Athenians ate pickled and credited with aphrodisiac powers. Latin took it as bulbus and English as bulb in the 1560s, for plants only. Glassblowers borrowed it for the swollen end of a thermometer, and from there it passed to the electric lamp, so a light bulb is named after an onion.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1560s
Same family
bulbousbulbilbulbar
In a sentence
Plant the tulip bulbs pointed end up, about ten centimetres down.
The bulb in the hallway went again.