Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An umbelliferous plant the juice of which was used by the ancient Greeks as a food and medicine: called in Latin laserpitium. (See laser, laserpitium.) It has been variously identified, as with Thapsia Garganica.
- n. [NL. (Linnæus, 1752).] A genus of composite plants, of the tribe Helianthoideæ and subtribe Melampodieæ. It is distinguished by its large flower-heads with a broad involucre, sterile disk-flowers, and pistillate and fertile strap-shaped ray-flowers in one or two rows, producing compressed achenes bordered by two wings which are toothed or awned at the apex. Twenty species have been described, of which eleven are now considered distinct. They are all natives of the United States, chiefly in the Mississippi valley and Southern States. They are tall roughhairy perennials, with a resinous juice, bearing alternate, opposite, or whorled leaves of various shapes, and either entire, toothed, or lobed. The yellow flowers (in one species the rays are white) are borne in long-stalked heads, which are solitary or loosely corymbed. S. terebinthinaceum, remarkable for its odor of turpentine, is the prairiedock of the west. For S. perfoliatum, see
cup-plant ; and for S. laciniatum, seerosin-weed and compass-plant.
Wiktionary
- n. a plant, thought to be extinct, used in ancient Greece and Rome in cooking and as a contraceptive.
WordNet 3.0
- n. tall North American perennial herbs
Examples
“laserpicium A substance obtained from a north African shrub called silphium.”
“Further, Persia produced a coarse kind of silphium or assafoetida; it was famous for its walnuts, which were distinguished by the epithet of "royal"; and it supplied to the pharmacopeia of Greece and Rome a certain number of herbs.”
“The town even stamped a stalk of silphium on its coinage.”
“Cyrene was famous for its horses and export of the valuable but pungent plant silphium, used in seasoning and many medicines, including contraceptives.”
“Wikipedia reports that the seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as an herbal contraceptive, might be the source of the heart symbol.”
The Huffington Post: Beverley Golden: How Well Do You Know Your Heart?
“Some argue that the silphium seed pod, which is heart shaped, is where the design came from but the truth is lost in antiquity.”
“For instance, hemp apparently is funnier than the once prevalent and popular contraceptive silphium – go figure.”
“Battiades the First, in Libya where the silphium grows;”
“There is a magnificent 6th century Laconian cup thought to show King Arkesilas of Cyrene supervising the weighing of silphium...”
“The OED calls it "A gum-resin mentioned by Roman writers; obtained from an umbelliferous plant called lāserpīcium or silphium"; the OLD entry is again omitting citations:”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘silphium’.
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rhii's words to remember and incorporate
Just whatever words I might happen across in my wanderings that I find myself compelled to write down so that I remember to try to use them. Not necessarily unusual words, but worthwhile ones.
redact, treatise, vitrify, cogitate, propensity, silphium, saccharine, minutiae, sluicing, dalliance, remonstrated, carnelian and 131 more...
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Gums & Resins
Naturally occurring gums and resins.
amber, copal, dammar, mastic, sandarac, ammoniacum, gamboge, elemi, scammony, myrrh, turpentine, copaiba and 155 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1406 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for silphium.
knitandpurl "Beyond it lay overgrown beds and plants John had never set eyes on before: tall resinous fronds, prickly shrubs, long grey-green leaves hot to the tongue. Nestling among them he found the root whose scent drifted among the trees like a ghost, sweet and tarry. He knelt and pressed it to his nose.
' That was called silphium.' His mother stood behind him. 'It grew in Saturnus's first garden.'"
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk, p 88 Nov 10, 2012