Everyday LifeGreek → English
Rhubarb
/ˈruːbɑːrb/noun
A garden plant with tart red stalks eaten cooked, and poisonous leaves.
The Greek roots
ῥᾶ
rhâ
the rhubarb root
βάρβαρον
bárbaron
foreign, barbarian
Literally: “foreign rha”
The story of the word
Medieval Latin rheubarbarum reads as barbarian rha, the root that came from beyond the Greek-speaking world; some ancient writers connect rha to the river Rha, the old name of the Volga, along the trade route the root travelled. Europe used it as a purgative drug for centuries before anyone thought of eating the stalks with sugar. The theatrical rhubarb, muttered by extras to imitate crowd noise, is a nineteenth-century stage habit and unrelated to the plant except by sound.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
barbarianbarbarous
In a sentence
The first forced rhubarb arrives in January, pink and absurdly bright.
Strip the leaves off and put them on the compost, not on the plate.