herbaceus

Forms

herbāceus (feminine herbācea, neuter herbāceum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin herba (“grass, herbage”) + -āceus, “resembling herbage”.^[2][3] The TLL compares adjectives such as rosāceus.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL knows it only from Pliny the Elder,^[3] who uses it of things the colour of grass: of the spice amomum he rates the pale kind second, “herbāceum peius, pessimumque candidum”, the grass-green kind worse and the white worst.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Pliny applies it to grass-green leaves, to a flower (as opposed to a white one), to an oil and to the mineral chrysocolla.^[4] The TLL notes the spelling herbacius in some manuscripts.^[3] English took the word in the 17th century as herbaceous.^[5]

Timeline

• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of leaves, flowers and minerals of a grass-green colour.^[3][4][6]
• 1640s – English borrows it as herbaceous.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of the colour of grass, grass-green.^[2][4]
2. Grassy, like herbage.^[4][3]

Word family

• herbācium

Related words

• herba
• herbāns
• herbāria
• herbārium
• herbārius
• herbāticus
• English herbaceous

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de