This is an alphabetical listing of wort plants, meaning plants that employ the syllable wort in their English-language common names.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary's Ask Oxford site, "A word with the suffix -wort is often very old. The Old English word was wyrt. The modern variation, root, comes from Old Norse. It was often used in the names of herbs and plants that had medicinal uses, the first part of the word denoting the complaint against which it might be specially efficacious. By the middle of the 17th-century -wort was beginning to fade from everyday use.[1]
The Naturalist Newsletter states, "Wort derives from the Old English wyrt, which simply meant plant. The word goes back even further, to the common ancestor of English and German, to the Germanic wurtiz. Wurtiz also evolved into the modern German word Wurzel, meaning root."[2]
- ^ "World of Words: A word about some useful plants". Archived from the original on February 5, 2005. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
- ^ Conrad, Jim (December 21, 2003). "Natchez Naturalist Newsletter". www.backyardnature.net.