The lean worthy in our title graphic is Geoffrey of Anjou, founder of the Plantagenet line. Today I begin with plantar wart, a phrase from my Dictionary of Medical Derivations and go on to related words, concluding with the Plantagenets and a dram of liquid poesy from Robert Burns. Plantar wart, a wart on the sole of the foot, takes its adjective from Latin plantaris, itself from the Latin medical phrase planta pedis Latin ‘the flat part of the foot, the sole.’ Latin planta is the origin of the verb plantare which has the prime meaning of putting roots or cuttings or seedlings in the ground and firming them into the soil by tamping on them with the sole of the foot. It was not until the word had been borrowed into the Romance languages that it acquired its modern meaning of any green plant. The Classical Latin word for any green plant was herba.
WART FALSTAFF: Is thy name Wart? WART: Yea, sir. FALSTAFF: Thou art a very ragged wart. William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part II Etymology of Wart The word wearte in Old English meant bump, knob, wart, outgrowth. Compare the German noun Warze ‘wart’ and Old Scandinavian varta, ultimately from the hypothetical Indo-European root *werd ‘wart’, and thus perhaps cognate with Latin verruca ‘wart’ and in a Slavic reflex, the Old Church Slavonic vredu ‘bodily damage.’ A wart is a hard, benign tumor of the epidermis caused by a virus. Some warts disappear; others can be removed. The Latin synonym, verruca, is used in medical literature. A plantar wart is one on the sole of the foot. Because of the pressure exerted on it during walking, this wart develops a hard ring, a callus, around its soft central part, and is painful. They grow in clusters and are usually flat. Cryosurgery and cautery are two therapies.
What Causes Them? Plantar warts are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) that invades the skin through tiny cuts or abrasions. Epidemics of plantar warts sometimes break out among people who share gym or athletic facilities or who engage in group activities where bare feet are the rule. The warts may not appear for weeks or months after the initial exposure. Like other viral infections, plantar warts are contagious, commonly spread in public swimming pools or communal showers, contracted by walking barefoot on unsanitary surfaces. Touching and scratching can cause the virus to spread. Because most humans build immunity to the virus with age, plantar warts are more common in children than in adults. Origin of the Many Meanings of the Word Plant From this Latin verb plantare through Old English and Middle English forms comes our modern English verb to plant and its accompanying noun plant. A plant is a living organism usually dependent on photosynthesis for nutriment, devoid of neural systems and lacking true self-locomotion. All the other meanings of the noun plant stem from this prime meaning.
In its industrial meanings, a plant first denoted not seeds installed in the ground but machinery and tools installed in a factory and needed to carry out some industrial process. Soon afterward the word plant came to mean the physical building in which the machines were housed and in which the industrial activity occurred. Plantatio is a Latin noun, an elaboration of planta, which refers to the act of seeding a crop. This gave us in late Middle English plantation ‘the action of putting seeds in the ground.’ A developed meaning from that initial sense was a farm or estate for the production of a specific crop like tobacco, cotton or coffee. Other Planta-Derived Words Latin planta is a reflex of the ancient Proto-Indo-European root *plat ‘flat’ with a nasal infix, that is, *plat- becomes *plant-. The function of infixing the nasal sound is to expand the semantic possibilities beyond those carried by the bare original word root. In other words, a root stem is altered or elaborated so that new but related meanings can be added to the first sense of the root. English and the Romance languages have all the prefixed verbs like implant, replant, supplant and transplant. Very early on, Old High German borrowed it as pflanzen and Pflanze. In the 19th century, Russian adopted planter and plantation. Perhaps the most surprising derivation is the Scottish and Irish word clan! In Old Irish planta became cland and one of its earliest Latin meanings was carried by monks to the Emerald Isle, thus cland first meant sprout, cutting, then offspring, then a small tribe. In Gaelic clann acquired a semantic expansion to signify a tribe of related people. This was borrowed into Scots and English as clan ‘large family of one name.’ In Welsh plant is a word for children and planta ‘to beget children’ is a Welsh verb.
Plantagenet: A Royal Family Name
One of the dynasties that ruled England was the Plantagenets. Their surname is Medieval French plante genêt from Medieval Latin planta ‘sprig, branch’ + genesta ‘broom’ (a shrub). Plantagenet began as a nickname for the founder of the family, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. According to legend, Geoff was fond of wearing a sprig of broom in his cap. Another story claims he planted broom on his estates to provide better cover for the game he hunted there. From Geoffrey descend a whole line of British kings beginning with Henry II in 1154 and ending with Richard III’s death in 1485. Geoffrey of Anjou was granted the first known example of personal armorial bearings in 1127 by King Henry I of England. But no sprig of broom appears on his escutcheon. His coat of arms features golden leopards passant guardant or lions rampant. Apparently the leopards are heraldically correct and the lions are spurious. Mais qui sait, mon petit chou-chou d’Anjou? On Broom, the Plant And we’ll end with a wee scrap of Robbie Burns, for those for whom broom can never be a mere weed. Their groves o' sweet myrtle -Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) The point of today's word trip? What could be more exciting than to watch a few syllables roll down through the centuries? Some few there are who would answer: "Watching paint dry?" I would answer: a person not interested in words is not interested in human life. For better or for worse, words spurred the deeds that have put us where we are. And it behooves each sentient being to become aware of how words work and of how they are set by villains to work against us.
© 2006 William Gordon Casselman
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