Everyday LifeGreek → English
Oxymel
/ˈɒksɪmɛl/noun
A preparation of vinegar and honey, taken as a medicine or now as a drink.
The Greek roots
ὀξύς
oxús
sharp, sour
μέλι
méli
honey
Literally: “sour honey”
The story of the word
The Hippocratic writers prescribe it for chest complaints and prize it for thinning phlegm, and Galen went on recommending it centuries later; it stayed in European pharmacopoeias into the nineteenth century. The first element runs through English on two separate tracks, taste and shape. ὀξύς is the sharp of oxygen, which Lavoisier named in the wrong belief that it made acids acid, and of oxymoron, sharp and dull in one word.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
oxygenoxymoronhydromelparoxysm
In a sentence
She makes an elderberry oxymel every autumn and drinks it through the winter.