herb

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English erbe, usually so spelt in Middle English,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French erbe (“grass, herb, plant fed to animals”) (modern herbe),^[2][4][5][6] from Latin herba (“grass, green crops, herb”),^[2][4][7][8] a word of uncertain origin.^[9][8] The spelling with h- appears occasionally in Old French and Middle English after the Latin, and regularly from about 1475,^[2][4] but the h was not pronounced until the 19th century.^[2][3][10] The same Latin word gave yerba, herva and erba.^[2][4][8] Etymonline notes that the native English word for such a plant is wort.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A plant whose stem does not become woody and lasting, as in a shrub or tree, but stays soft and dies down after flowering, and, in a narrower sense, a plant whose leaves or stems are used for food, medicine or scent: both c1290, in the South English Legendary.^[2] Barnhart dates the word to probably before 1300,^[9] and the Anglo-Norman Dictionary records herbe, grass or herb, from 1113–19.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline notes that the early sense was especially a leafy vegetable eaten as food.^[4] The collective sense "herbage", grass and plants used for pasture, is recorded from c1384, in the Wycliffite Bible,^[2] and the leafy part of a plant as distinct from its root from 1662.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined herbs as plants with soft stalks and nothing woody in them, such as grass and hemlock.^[11] The verb is recorded from 1660 for grazing, and in cookery, to season with herbs, from 1922.^[2] The slang sense "marijuana" is recorded in South Africa in 1949 and became common in the 1960s;^[12][4] Green's Dictionary of Slang links its use among Rastafarians to the religious role of the plant.^[12] In English dialects the word was often yarb or yerb, as in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Somerset, and herb of grace was a name for rue.^[13]

Timeline

• c1290 – a non-woody plant; a plant used for food, medicine or scent.^[2]
• c1384 – herbage, pasture plants.^[2]
• c1475 – spelling with h- becomes regular.^[2]
• 1660 – verb, to graze.^[2]
• 1662 – the leafy part of a plant.^[2]
• 1922 – verb, to season with herbs.^[2]
• 1949 – (slang) marijuana.^[12]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A plant whose leaves, seeds or flowers are used to give flavour to food, or in medicine or perfume: Basil and thyme are the herbs she grows most.
2. (botany) A seed-bearing plant that does not form a woody stem and dies down at the end of the growing season.
3. (slang) Marijuana.

Word family

• herby
• herblike
• herbless
• cowherb
• herbed
• herbology
• potherb
• herb bennet

Related words

• herbaceous
• herbage
• herbal
• herbarium
• herbicide
• herbivore
• herbivorous
• yerba
• wort

Usage notes

In British English the word is pronounced with /h/, while in the United States it is usually pronounced without it, the older pronunciation.^[14][15][9] Barnhart notes that even in the United States the h is sounded in herbicide and often in herbaceous.^[9] The Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary notes that the American name Herb is always pronounced with /h/.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
13. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press