Everyday LifeGreek → English
Coriander
/ˌkɒriˈændər/noun
An aromatic herb whose seeds and fresh leaves flavour food across most of the world.
The Greek roots
κορίαννον
koríannon
coriander plant
Literally: “bedbug plant”
Follow a root:κορίαννον2 words
The story of the word
The name is old enough to appear in Linear B, written ko-ri-ja-do-no on Bronze Age tablets from Knossos, so Greek inherited or borrowed it rather than built it. The usual gloss links it to κόρις, a bedbug, for the smell of the unripe seed; that reading is ancient and may still be a guess. English calls the leaf coriander and American English calls it cilantro, which is the same Latin coriandrum come north through Spanish.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
In a sentence
Half the table loved the coriander and the other half picked it out.