Everyday LifeGreek → English
Oregano
/əˈrɛɡənoʊ/noun
A pungent Mediterranean herb whose dried leaves flavour tomato sauces, grilled meat and salad.
The Greek roots
ὀρίγανον
orīganon
wild marjoram
Literally: “brightness of the mountain”
Follow a root:ὀρίγανον1 word
The story of the word
The ancient reading splits ὀρίγανον into ὄρος, mountain, and γάνος, brightness: the plant that lights up a dry hillside. Linguists now suspect the word is older than Greek and was taken over whole, the split being a tidy guess made afterwards. English had it as origanum from Latin for centuries, and the Spanish-shaped oregano came in through American kitchens, spreading with pizza after the Second World War.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Spanish → American English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
She crushed the dried oregano between her palms over the pan.