Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Crocus
/ˈkroʊkəs/noun
A small cup-flowered bulb of early spring or autumn, one species of which yields saffron.
The Greek roots
κρόκος
krókos
saffron, crocus
Literally: “saffron”
Follow a root:κρόκος1 word
The story of the word
κρόκος is almost certainly a Semitic loan, kin to Hebrew karkom, and it travelled with the spice rather than with the plant. To a Greek the word named the dye and the dried stigmas first and the flower second; Homer's dawn wears saffron, κροκόπεπλος. Women are painted gathering crocus stigmas on the walls at Akrotiri on Santorini, about 1,600 years before Christ.
- How it travelled
- Semitic → Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
In a sentence
The first crocus came up through frost at the end of January.
He planted two hundred crocus corms along the drive.