Nectar
/ˈnɛktər/noun
The sugary fluid plants secrete to attract pollinators; in myth, the drink of the gods.
The Greek roots
Literally: “perhaps overcoming death”
The story of the word
The gods drank nectar and ate ambrosia, and Homer keeps the two strictly apart. Where the word comes from is argued: the most quoted reading splits it into nek-, death, and a root meaning to overcome, making nectar the thing that defeats dying, though not every scholar accepts it. Botany borrowed the word in the eighteenth century for what flowers offer insects, and the nectarine is simply a peach named for tasting like the drink.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1550s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
A hummingbird has to take nectar roughly every fifteen minutes to stay alive.
After that walk, the first cold beer was nectar.