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gowan (GOU-uhn) - n., (Scot. & N. Eng.) any of several yellow or white field-flowers, esp. the English daisy (Bellis perennis).
What I actually had on my list was gowany, decked with daisies, but that's another one where the definition would require another round of explanation. Also known as the common daisy, lawn daisy, bruisewort, and woundwort (though there's not the only thing called those last two, by a long shot). Best known outside of Scotland and Northumberland from certain stories of P.G. Wodehouse, who used the phrase "plucking the gowans fine" as an idiom for carefree younger days, adapting a line by Burns from "Auld Lang Syne." Prior to the late 1500s, gollan was the more common form, from Old Norse gollinn, golden.
---L.
What I actually had on my list was gowany, decked with daisies, but that's another one where the definition would require another round of explanation. Also known as the common daisy, lawn daisy, bruisewort, and woundwort (though there's not the only thing called those last two, by a long shot). Best known outside of Scotland and Northumberland from certain stories of P.G. Wodehouse, who used the phrase "plucking the gowans fine" as an idiom for carefree younger days, adapting a line by Burns from "Auld Lang Syne." Prior to the late 1500s, gollan was the more common form, from Old Norse gollinn, golden.
---L.
