Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Centaury
/ˈsɛntɔːri/noun
A small pink-flowered herb of the gentian family, long used as a bitter tonic.
The Greek roots
κενταύριον
kentaúrion
centaur plant
Κένταυρος
Kéntauros
centaur
Literally: “the centaur's plant”
The story of the word
Named for Chiron, the one centaur who was a healer rather than a drunk, and who was said to have treated a wound of his own with it. The bitterness is real and the plant was a standard tonic in European herbals for centuries. Chiron's wound could not be healed and he gave up his immortality to escape it, which makes the plant's name a small joke about the limits of medicine.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- Old English
Same family
centaurCentaurus
In a sentence
Centaury flowers open only in full sun, so an overcast walk misses them entirely.
The old tonic recipe starts with a handful of dried centaury.