Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Rue
/ruː/noun
A blue-green Mediterranean shrub with a harsh bitter scent, used sparingly in cooking and formerly in medicine.
The Greek roots
ῥυτή
rhytḗ
the rue plant
Literally: “the plant the Peloponnesians called rhytē”
Follow a root:ῥυτή1 word
The story of the word
Greek ῥυτή, reported as the Peloponnesian name for the plant, went into Latin as ruta and reached English through French. The English verb has nothing to do with it: to rue a decision comes from Old English hrēowan, a Germanic word for sorrow that happens to have landed on the same three letters. Shakespeare used the collision when Ophelia hands out rue, calls it the herb of grace, and keeps some back for herself.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
In a sentence
A single rue leaf is enough for a whole bottle of grappa, and two is too many.
The old physic garden still has rue growing where the labels say it should.