Comment on ard
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days agoThe “must” in mustard is juice and pulp which you intend to ferment, because grape must was an ingredient. There’s a lot of debate over whether the “ard” is the one in this post or ardens (burning).
So the mustard seed was named after the condiment?
stray@pawb.social 5 days ago
Yes. It’s not too unusual for that sort of thing to happen. Feverfew and lungwort are plants named after their medicinal uses, and the tea plant and rubber tree are named for what they produce. Wheat means white, referring to the ground flour.
A lot of things might have had other names before a use was discovered, or they just might not have been named by anyone yet. I think most plants have probably had lots of different regional names within the same language. Flowers seem to collect a lot of names; I think they make us poetic because they tended to interact with human culture in many ways.