sedge

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English segge,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English secg (“sedge, reed, rush”),^[3][5][6] from Proto-Germanic *sagjaz,^[3][7][8] from a suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”).^[3][9][8] The plant is thus named for its cutting leaves,^[10][3][11] as Latin gladiolus, which the Old English word renders in glosses, is named for a sword,^[5] and Old English also had a rare feminine noun of this form for a sword.^[5][6] Kroonen is more cautious, calling the link with saw only possible.^[7] It is cognate with Middle Low German segge, the source of German Segge,^[12][13] and with Dutch zegge.^[7] The OED and others compare Latin secō (“to cut”),^[5][8][14] and Old High German sahar from the same root.^[5] Some scholars add the Celtic words, Proto-Celtic *seskā, Old Irish seisg and Welsh hesg.^[5][3][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A plant of wet places, in Old English glosses from the Corpus Glossary on,^[5] where it renders Latin carex, gladiolus and lisca.^[6] Barnhart dates it to about 700, Dictionary.com to before 900.^[13][15] The Middle English segge is in The Owl and the Nightingale, about 1250.^[13]

Semantic evolution

For a long time sedge named various coarse rush-like or flag-like plants of wet ground, differing by locality; the Middle English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Unabridged include the yellow iris and the sweet flag.^[5][2][4] Johnson (1755) still defined it as a growth of narrow flags, noting that a narrow flag was called a sag or seg in the provinces.^[16] Botanical writers from 1785 tied it to the genus Carex, and later, after Lindley, to the whole family Cyperaceae.^[5] The form sedge is not recorded until the 1590s, according to Barnhart, and did not generally displace seg and segge until the early 1900s.^[13][3] English dialects used it for still other plants: cord-grass in Hampshire and twig-rush in Cambridgeshire.^[17] Anglers took it for the caddis fly from 1889, short for sedge-fly, and it has named a greenish or reddish brown since 1927.^[5][4]

Timeline

• Old English – a coarse rush-like plant of wet places.^[5][6]
• c. 1250 – Middle English segge.^[13]
• 1590s – the spelling sedge.^[13]
• 1638 – attributive, of sedge, in Milton's Lycidas.^[5]
• 1785 – in botany, a plant of the genus Carex.^[5]
• 1820 – verb, to be affected with sedging.^[5]
• 1889 – a caddis fly, short for sedge-fly.^[5]
• 1927 – the greenish or reddish brown of sedge.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A grasslike plant of the genus Carex or the wider family Cyperaceae, usually growing on wet ground: Sedge lined the far edge of the pond.^{[4][18][19][5]}
2. The sweet flag or the yellow iris.^[4][2][5]
3. (angling) A caddis fly, or an artificial fly made to imitate one.^[4][19][5]
4. A grayish or greenish brown.^[4][19][5]

Word family

• sedgy
• nutsedge
• sedged
• sedge wren

Related words

• saw
• section
• segment
• sickle
• secant

Usage notes

The OED lists a separate obsolete sedge, borrowed from Italian seggia (“seat”), only in Sandys's account of his journey (1615), for a hall of assembly and for a sedan chair.^[5]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
7. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ 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)
18. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
19. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press