Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Narcissus
/nɑːrˈsɪsəs/noun
A genus of spring bulbs including daffodils and jonquils, and the youth of the myth who loved his own reflection.
The Greek roots
νάρκισσος
nárkissos
narcissus, daffodil
νάρκη
nárkē
numbness, torpor
Literally: “the numbing flower”
The story of the word
Ancient writers linked the name to νάρκη, numbness, for the narcotic bulb, but the -issos ending points to a pre-Greek word that Greeks explained after the fact. The boy at the pool came second, attached to a plant already carrying the name. Freud's circle took narcissism from Ovid's version at the end of the 1890s. νάρκη also gave the narcotic and named the electric ray, which numbs whatever it touches.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
narcoticnarcissismnarcolepsy
In a sentence
A drift of narcissus came up along the wall every March.
He planted narcissus bulbs where the grass never grew properly.