narcissus

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin narcissus,^[2][3][4][5] from Ancient Greek νάρκισσος (nárkissos),^[2][3][6] of unknown origin and probably a loanword.^[2][5] Beekes takes the suffix as a clear sign of a word that is Pre-Greek,^[7][4] and Barnhart, Klein and Ayto likewise think of an Aegean language older than Greek.^[3][6][8] Pliny and Plutarch connected the name with νάρκη (nárkē, “numbness”), because of the plant's narcotic effects;^[2][8] several dictionaries still repeat this as possible,^{[9][10][11][12]} but the OED says it is no longer generally accepted, and Beekes and Barnhart call it folk etymology.^[2][7][3] The youth Narcissus of the Greek myth shares the name: Klein and Ayto have it pass from the plant to him,^[6][8] while the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins has the flower named after him.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A plant of the genus now called Narcissus: the OED's first record is in the Old English translation of the Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarium, and in Old and early Middle English the word kept its Latin case endings.^[2] The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins and Merriam-Webster also put it in Old English times.^[13][14] The fully English use is dated 1548, in William Turner's The Names of Herbs, by Barnhart,^[3] to the 1540s by Etymonline,^[4] and to the mid-16th century by the Shorter Oxford.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The Greek name did not mean the modern narcissus: Etymonline says it was possibly a kind of iris or lily.^[4] In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Narcissus is a beautiful youth who falls in love with his own reflection in a fountain, and where he dies the flower springs up.^[2] Ayto adds that the gods punished him in this way for spurning Echo.^[8] Chaucer mentions him in the Knight's Tale,^[2] and the name came to be applied to any person of extreme self-regard, recorded from the early 17th century by the Shorter Oxford.^[9][2] Johnson (1755) glossed the plant simply as "a daffodil".^[15] From the youth's story came narcissism, used by Coleridge in 1822 and later made a term of psychology.^[2][4][8]

Timeline

• Old English – the plant, with Latin case endings.^[2]
• c. 1385 – Narcissus, the youth of the myth, in Chaucer's Knight's Tale.^[2]
• early 17th century – a person characterized by extreme self-regard.^[9] Etymonline dates Narcissus as a figure of self-love to 1767.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A spring-flowering bulbous plant of the genus Narcissus, in the family Amaryllidaceae, with yellow, orange or white flowers that have a central corona; the group includes the daffodil and the jonquil.^[2][10][14]
2. Especially, a species with a short corona, such as the fragrant white pheasant's eye.^[9][16]
3. A person, usually good-looking, characterized by extreme self-regard; a narcissist.^[9][2]

Related words

• narcissism
• narcissist

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt