Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Chicory
/ˈtʃɪkəri/noun
A blue-flowered plant whose leaves are eaten as a bitter salad and whose roasted root flavours coffee.
The Greek roots
κιχόριον
kikhórion
chicory plant
Literally: “the bitter blue-flowered herb”
Follow a root:κιχόριον1 word
The story of the word
Theophrastus and Dioscorides both list κιχόρια among the bitter greens gathered for the table. The word has no plausible Greek parts and is generally taken as a borrowing, with an Egyptian source often proposed. The coffee habit came from Napoleon's blockade, when roasted chicory root stretched the little real coffee that got through, and New Orleans kept the taste long after the shortage ended.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
In a sentence
Chicory grows along the roadside here, flowering that particular blue for one morning at a time.