September 2008

Get your teeth into dandelions

23 Sep, 2008  No Comment

Our word of the week celebrates the first day of spring (here in Australia). Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, is a ubiquitous weed that originates from Europe and Asia. It is used to make many herbal remedies to stimulate digestion and to cleanse the liver. How did it get its name?

The genus name may derive from the Arabic tarakhshaqun from the Persian, tark hashgun, or wild endive. Another explanation is that it comes from the Greek taraxis meaning confusion and akos which means remedy, ie referring to the medicinal use of the plant to remedy confusion.

The species name, officina, from Medieval Latin originally meant storeroom but had come to mean a specialized herb store.

But how did it get to be called a dandelion? Dandelion is a Middle English borrow word from the Old French, dentdelion. And this, of course, is the clue: it refers to the shape of the leaves which are strongly indented resembling lion’s teeth. The plant’s original genus name, given by Linnaeus, was Leontodon, similarly meaning lion teeth.

In modern French the plant is named pissenlit, which means “urinate in bed”, referring to its diuretic properties (”pissabeds” is an English folkname as is piscialletto in Italian).

Avoid confusion (and bed-wetting) use Madrigal Communications for your organization’s communication.

Bombast is cottoning on

2 Sep, 2008  No Comment

I am sure that you know what bombast means: grandiloquent or pretentious language; an inflated style; pompous language inappropriate for the occasion. It is more often used in its adjectival or adverbial form bombastic.

It has held a similar meaning at least since Shakespeare described Falstaff as the sweet creature of bombast in Henry IV.

But do you know how the word originated? It comes directly from medieval latin bombax via the old French bambace meaning cotton padding. These in turn came from Greek pambax and the Persian pambak words for cotton.

Hence bombast has evolved from cotton, to stuffing and padding for clothes or upholstery, to an abstract meaning of padded and inflated language.

Madrigal Communications advises you to avoid bombastic language in your publications: instead prefer plain English.