Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Dittany
/ˈdɪtəni/noun
A woolly grey-leaved marjoram native to the Cretan mountains, used in tea and folk medicine.
The Greek roots
δίκταμνον
díktamnon
dittany, Cretan herb
Literally: “the herb of Mount Dikte”
Follow a root:δίκταμνον1 word
The story of the word
Ancient writers tied the name to Mount Δίκτη in Crete, though the ending is not transparent Greek and the connection may be a guess made after the fact. Aristotle passes on the story that wild goats shot with arrows ate dittany and the arrowheads fell out; Virgil borrows it and has Venus fetch the herb to draw an arrowhead from Aeneas. It still grows on Cretan cliffs, still gets picked by people who climb for it, and is still sold as δίκταμο in every Greek market.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → Middle English
- First recorded
- 14th century
In a sentence
She brewed dittany with honey for a sore throat, the way her grandmother did.