Phlox

The story of the word

φλόξ is flame, from φλέγειν, to burn, and Theophrastus applied it to a brightly coloured flower nobody has since identified with confidence. Eighteenth-century botanists reused the name for an American genus with nothing Greek about it. The same root burns in phlegm, which looks wrong until you learn that φλέγμα first meant the heat of inflammation and only later the cold sluggish humour.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → Latin → English

First recorded

18th century