carnation
/kɑrˈneɪʃən/noun, adjective
A fragrant flowering plant or pale flesh-pink color
From Latin carn- (flesh).
Lineage
The story
A carnation began its English career in the 1530s amid a tangle of flower names and color words. The leading explanation traces it through Middle French carnation and Italian carnagione to Late Latin carnātiō, “fleshiness,” ultimately linking it to Latin carō, “flesh”—which itself reaches back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to cut.” Wait, really? The same family gives us carnal, carnage, carnivore, and incarnation, while the flower’s soft pink color supplied a much gentler branch of the family tree. There is a rival theory: the flower’s toothed petals looked like a little crown, so French coronation may have been reshaped into carnation; the evidence is messy, and the OED notes that not every carnation is flesh-colored. So when you see one at a school dance or in a florist’s bucket, remember that its name may preserve either a scrap of ancient flesh—or the ghost of a tiny floral crown.
Modern usage
A cheaper, overlooked alternative to a rose; also a flower associated with being high, according to informal slang entries
- Heard in
- informal slang
Words from the same roots
carn- · Latin, ‘flesh, meat; flesh color’
Derivedcarnal, carnage, incarnation, incarnadine, carnivore, carnelian
Sources
- Etymonlinecarnation, pink, clove, gillyflower, incarnadine
- Urban Dictionarycarnation
- Wiktionarycarnation