farinaceous

[prettygoodword]

farinaceous - adj., made from, rich in, or consisting in starch; having a mealy or powdery texture.


From Latin farinaceus, mealy, from farina.

---L.

Comments

bh-->b-->f

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

...far, the Latin word, giving us also farrago (which scholars assure me is not cousin to porridge, although I'm dubious about the por, porrum (leek) derivation insisted on). And far and barley are from the same root, which also became barn.

Re: bh-->b-->f

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

I've heard the porridge < leeks one before, and was nonplussed.

---L.

Re: bh--b--f

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

It seems suspect to me, the sort of cod-etymology that gets propagated for decades once it gets into print by being uncritically cited wholesale and re-incorporated into a new work. Yes, porrum-->porro (modern Italian); but porrata (modern Italian) is a kind of leek quiche, and porridge has less to do with leeks and more to do with grain.

Leeks seem to have been carried northwards by the Romans and/or the French, but were already well-known; in Swedish they're purjolök, combining both words, the p-r form from Romance languages and the l-k or l-g forms from Germanic/Nordic.