spurge

Etymology

The plant name is inherited from Middle English spurge, also sporge and spourge,^[2] borrowed from Old French espurge, now épurge,^[3][4][5] with Anglo-Norman spurge beside it.^[2][6] Hoad, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English take the English form as a shortening of the French one,^[4][7][8] and Anglo-Latin had spurgea and spurgia.^[2] The Anglo-Norman noun is recorded from about 1240.^[9] It comes from espurgier (“to purge”),^{[3][10][11][12]} which Klein calls a back-formation,^[5] and the French verb is from Latin expūrgō (“to cleanse, purge”),^[3][6][12] formed from ex- (“out”) and pūrgō (“to purge”), the source of purge.^[6][10][13] The plant is named for the purgative action of its milky juice.^{[6][10][8][11]} Skeat instead explained the name by the juice corroding and so cleansing away warts.^[14] The English verb was borrowed directly from that French verb.^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

As a plant name: the MED prints in brackets a gloss from before 1300, Spurgia, i. spurge, i. guweorn, and has the word from before 1400 in the Alphita and other medical texts.^[2] Barnhart dates sporge to 1373,^[15][10] and the OED's first record of the noun is before 1400, in J. Mirfield's Sinonoma Bartholomei.^[3] The verb "to cleanse, purify" is older in the OED, from 1303, in R. Mannyng's Handlyng Synne.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The plant kept its medical associations: a Middle English herbal in the MED says spurge and laurel are given to make people void themselves above or below,^[2] and the MED also records it as an undesirable weed in figurative use.^[2] Johnson (1755) called it "a plant violently purgative", said its juice was used to destroy warts, and quoted Browne on the idea that the leaves purge or make one vomit according to the way they are plucked.^[16] From 1578, in H. Lyte's herbal, distinguishing words named the many kinds,^[3] and since 1864 the name has also covered a few plants related to or resembling them,^[3] as in Japanese spurge and Allegheny spurge.^[12] In Australian slang of the 1940s and 1950s a spurge was an effeminate young man, a pun on weedy.^[17] The verb followed another path, from cleansing a person to liquor throwing off its impurities in fermenting, recorded from about 1440.^[3] Palsgrave (1530) has it for wine or ale cleansing itself in the vessel,^[18] and it survived in Derbyshire and Northamptonshire dialect for beer giving off yeast when first put in the cask.^[18][7]

Timeline

• 1303 – verb, to cleanse or purify.^[3]
• 1373 – noun, the plant, as sporge.^[15][10] The OED has it from before 1400.^[3]
• c. 1440 – verb, of ale or wine, to throw off impurities in fermenting.^[3]
• 1530 – verb, to empty the bowels.^[3]
• 1578 – noun, with a distinguishing word, for a particular kind of the plant.^[3]
• 1832 – noun, the name of a moth.^[3]
• 1864 – noun, plants related to or resembling spurge.^[3]
• 1941 – noun, in Australian slang, an effeminate young man.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of many plants of the genus Euphorbia, with an acrid milky juice and small flowers surrounded by bracts; some have purgative properties.^{[13][11][12][3]}
2. With a qualifying word, a plant related to or resembling these, such as Japanese spurge.^[12][3]
3. A moth whose name includes the word.^[3]
4. (Australian slang) An effeminate young man.^[17]

Verb

1. (dialect) Of beer or other liquor, to ferment and throw off impurities or yeast.^[3][7][18]
2. (obsolete, 1303–1546) To cleanse or purify a person or the body; figuratively, to clear of guilt.^[3][7]

Related words

• purge
• expurgate
• pure

Usage notes

The OED has a separate rare verb spurge, "to sprout, to spout or gush out" (1488–1582), traced ultimately to Latin exporgere, and a noun from it, "a shoot" (1630).^[3] In East Anglia spurge was also a verb for ceiling between rafters with a thin coat of mortar, without laths.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b 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 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
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
12. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
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. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
18. ^ a b c d 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)