Wordie: Hemlock

6 months ago VanishedOne said:

Here's a paper discussing whether it's probable that hemlock really was the poison that killed Socrates, in light of the standard objection that the symptoms described by Plato seem not to fit. Apparently the word 'hemlock' has quite a chequered history:

Most ancient writers seem to have known very well which herb they were talking about when they spoke of hemlock... Yet as time passed, the identity of the Athenian plant grew less certain... {and} with the translation of Greek kôneion into Latin cicuta and then into English 'hemlock,' the name took on a more or less generic meaning.

In English, 'hemlock' refers not only to poison hemlock, but to water hemlock, hemlock water dropwort, lesser hemlock (fool’s parsley), and other herbs as well... Through the centuries Latin cicuta became virtually an English word, a synonym for all types of hemlock. At the same time it acquired a somewhat more scientific veneer, for botanical works were written in Latin all the way through the eighteenth century. With no agreed upon system of plant names, each botanist not only used the names however he wished but invented more of his own. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the confusion of the hemlocks was enormous, with literally dozens of different plants assigned various versions of the names cicuta and cicutaria, in scores of botanical works. No one could keep up with it anymore.

Linnaeus brought some order to the world of plants with his great scheme of plant classification, but paradoxically, when it came to the confusion of the hemlocks, he seems to have made matters even worse. For he separated Greek kôneion and Latin cicuta, assigning the name Conium to poison hemlock and Cicuta to water hemlock... But the Greek and Latin terms had travelled together through the ages, and they could not so readily be divorced, whether in popular language or in general medical discussions.

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