Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Cyclamen
/ˈsɪkləmən/noun
A woodland plant with swept-back petals and marbled leaves, growing from a flat round tuber.
The Greek roots
κυκλάμινος
kykláminos
cyclamen, the round-rooted plant
Literally: “the round one”
Follow a root:κυκλάμινος1 word
The story of the word
The name holds kýklos, circle, and ancient writers disagree about which circle is meant: the flat disc of the tuber, or the way the flower stalk coils into a tight spiral as the seed ripens and pulls the pod down to the soil. Dioscorides listed it as a drug and warned that a pregnant woman should not step over the root. It grows wild across the Greek hills and flowers in the first rain of autumn.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
cyclecyclonebicycleencyclopedia
In a sentence
Cyclamen had come up between the stones of the old threshold.