cassia

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English cassia,^[2][3] inherited from Old English cassia,^[4][5][3] borrowed from Latin casia (“a tree with aromatic bark”), also cassia,^[4][6][7] from Ancient Greek κασία (kasía, “cinnamon, cassia”), also κασσία (kassía).^[4][7][1] The Middle English Dictionary also names Old French as a source of the Middle English word,^[2] and the OED says Wyclif's word points to an Old French form with “ch”.^[4] The OED, Etymonline, Hoad, Klein and Skeat take the Greek from Biblical Hebrew קְצִיעָה (qəṣīʿāh, “cassia”),^{[4][8][9][7][10][1]} the bark so called from being stripped off, from a verb of that language meaning to cut off or strip off bark.^[4][8][9] Wiktionary goes on to Aramaic.^[1] More cautiously, Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Collins say only that the Greek is of Semitic origin and akin to the Hebrew,^[3][11] the American Heritage Dictionary calls it probably Phoenician and probably of Chinese origin in the end,^[6] and Beekes calls it an oriental loanword that may be Austro-Asiatic in origin.^[12] Partridge preferred an Egyptian source.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The spice bark, an inferior kind of cinnamon: in an Old English gloss of Psalm 44 (45):8 in the Anglo-Saxon Psalter.^[4] Dictionary.com dates the word to before 1000,^[14] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged to before the 12th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Greek had the word from Sappho and Herodotus on, for a kind of cinnamon.^[12] Its early English records are mostly in Bible texts, where it names a fragrant spice,^[4][2] and Johnson (1755) still explained it as "a sweet spice mentioned by Moses" in the holy oil of Exodus 30:24.^[15][4] Hoad says that, though found in Old and Middle English, it was not naturalized until the 16th century.^[9] Middle English also distinguished cassia lignea, the bark,^[2][4] from the plants that botanists now call Cassia, leguminous shrubs and trees whose leaves and pods gave medicines such as senna.^[4][11][5] From the late 16th century poets used the word for any fragrant plant, partly from the Psalm and partly from the casia of Vergil and Ovid.^[4][5] In the modern spice trade it is the bark sold and used much like true cinnamon, with a stronger flavour.^[3]

Timeline

• Old English – the spice bark, an inferior kind of cinnamon.^[4]
• before 1382 – a fragrant spice herb, The swote erbe casia, in the Wycliffite Bible.^[2]
• before 1398 – a leguminous plant of the genus later called Cassia; the bark as cassia lignea.^[4][2]
• 1543 – a medicinal product of such a plant.^[4]
• 1553 – the tree that yields the bark.^[4] The Shorter Oxford dates this sense to late Middle English.^[5]
• 1594 – in poetry, a fragrant shrub.^[4][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The aromatic bark of certain tropical trees of the genus Cinnamomum, ground and used as a spice like cinnamon, which it resembles but with a coarser, stronger flavour.^[3][6][4]
2. The East Asian evergreen tree that yields this bark.^[6][11][4]
3. Any of various mainly tropical leguminous trees, shrubs or herbs of the genus Cassia, with yellow flowers and long pods.^[6][11][5]
4. A medicinal product of these plants, especially a mild laxative from the pods, or senna.^[11][4][5]
5. (poetic) A fragrant shrub or plant.^[4][5]

Usage notes

The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Unabridged give the pronunciation with /ʃ/ in the second syllable: their respellings end in -shə.^[6][3] The OED also records an adjective cassia of 1692–93, now obsolete and of unknown origin.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
14. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.