poinsettia

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin Poinsettia, the genus name of the plant,^[2][3][4][5] given by R. Graham in 1836.^[2][6] The name honours Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first American minister to Mexico,^[3][4][7][2] and is formed with the Latin noun ending -ia used for names of plants and animals.^[3][2][5] Most dictionaries give Poinsett's dates as 1779–1851,^[2][8][4][3] but Collins and Dictionary.com print 1799–1851.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The genus Poinsettia of shrubby plants, now included in Euphorbia: 1836.^[2][5][4] Wordorigins.org finds the name Poinsettia pulcherima in R. Graham's description of new plants in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, dated 10 March 1836, and later that year in Curtis's Botanical Magazine, which said that Poinsett had found the plant in Mexico and sent it to Charleston in 1828.^[6] The OED's first record is the heading in Curtis's Botanical Magazine.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Poinsett was an amateur botanist who sent samples of the plant home from Mexico, where he served as minister from 1825 to 1830.^[6][11] Several dictionaries say he discovered it there,^[7][10] but Etymonline and Barnhart say only that he is said to have found it or made it known to botanists,^[4][3] and Hendrickson writes that he did not discover the plant and that it had reached the United States before him, so that it was named after him because he was well known.^[12] By the 1860s the species was placed in the genus Euphorbia, but the English name stayed.^[6][12] Its link with Christmas began in Mexico, where the plant is called Spanish flor de Noche Buena (“Christmas Eve flower”).^[6] In American speech the plant is also called the Christmas flower and the Mexican flameleaf,^[13] and Hendrickson gives Mexican flame-leaf as the name used in England.^[12] A 1967 informant from Texas told the Dictionary of American Regional English that people who seldom go to church are poinsettias, that is, Christmas churchgoers.^[13]

Timeline

• 1836 – Poinsettia, the genus name, in R. Graham's description of new plants;^[2][6] in English as the name of the plant, in Curtis's Botanical Magazine.^[2][6] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1830–40.^[10]
• 1967 – a person who goes to church only at Christmas, recorded in Texas.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A Mexican and Central American shrub, Euphorbia pulcherrima, whose small yellowish flowers are surrounded by large, usually scarlet bracts that look like petals, grown as a pot plant at Christmas: We put a poinsettia on the hall table every December.^{[9][5][14][15][6]}
2. Any of several spurges with showy bracts around the flower clusters.^[5][2]
3. (botany) Poinsettia, the former genus of these plants, now included in Euphorbia.^[5][2]

Usage notes

In the United States the pronunciation poinsetta, without the second i, is very common: observers in the 1940s called it an established mispronunciation, and one in Wisconsin in 1950 wrote that only florists said the word as spelt.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Wilton, Dave, Wordorigins.org, wordorigins.org, p. "poinsettia", 23 December 2024
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
13. ^ a b c d Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
14. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
15. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press