Earlier names for the berry were rasp, a dialectal term, and raspis. ![]() If you’re wondering about the origin of the name raspberry, etymologists have a better understanding of its roots. Both explanations are plausible but not convincing. Others have linked straw to the appearance of the runners when dried up. It is believed that strew could have been the original first element of strawberry because of the way the runners-the creeping stems that touch ground and root-of the plant "strew" other plants over an area. The most likely explanation is that the seedlike achenes that cover the strawberry were thought to resemble straw. (An achene is actually a small, dry, one-seeded fruit, and technically a strawberry is an enlarged pulpy receptacle bearing numerous achenes, but somehow this doesn't seem as appetizing as berry.)Īnother explanation is that straw in strawberry is a corruption of the word strew, which also goes back to Old English. People have enjoyed the strawberry for hundreds of years, and its name dates back to before the 12th century. The Old English word for the berry was strēawberige, and the exact origin of the name is not known. The kind of cob that has corn on it comes from a different Middle English word, cobbe, meaning "head," that was used to describe things having a rounded shape. For example, his character Bilbo taunts the giant spiders surrounding him in song: "Lazy Lob and crazy Cob are weaving webs to wind me." ( Lob is also an obsolete English word for "spider.") Tolkien also used attercop, a variation of ātorcoppe, in reference to the arachnids: Tolkien unearthed it in The Hobbit in 1937. Cob as a word for "spider" had some use in the 17th century in certain dialects, but it was obsolete before J. ![]() The change from p to b evolved over the following centuries, resulting in the spelling we use today, cobweb. In the 14th and 15th centuries, cobweb was used in the form coppeweb. Ātor meant "poison" and coppe was a derivative of either cop, meaning "top" or "head," or copp, "cup" or "vessel." In either case, ātorcoppe was formed in reference to the supposedly venomous head of the spider. The source of cob in the compound cobweb is coppe, a Middle English word for "spider." That word derives from the Old English name ātorcoppe.
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