smaragdine
Apr. 4th, 2013 07:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordsmaragdine (smuh-RAG-din) - adj., of, pertaining to, or resembling an emerald; emerald-colored.
Also an obsolete noun sense as an alternate spelling for emerald -- I say "spelling" because this and emerald come from the same root, the Greek name for emerald, smáragdos. This word was first declined into the adjectival smarágdinos, then borrowed by smaragdīnus, then into Middle English in the 14th century (along with a noun form smaragd), while for emerald, the noun was borrowed into Latin as smaragdus, which became Old French and Anglo-French esmeragde or esmeraude or esmeralde, which by the 13th century had become Middle English emeralde. In the other direction, the Greek word had an earlier form maragdos, which is apparently of Semitic origin, from the root b-r-q, to shine, flash in darkness (compare Akkadian barruktu and Hebrew bareket for emerald).
---L.
Also an obsolete noun sense as an alternate spelling for emerald -- I say "spelling" because this and emerald come from the same root, the Greek name for emerald, smáragdos. This word was first declined into the adjectival smarágdinos, then borrowed by smaragdīnus, then into Middle English in the 14th century (along with a noun form smaragd), while for emerald, the noun was borrowed into Latin as smaragdus, which became Old French and Anglo-French esmeragde or esmeraude or esmeralde, which by the 13th century had become Middle English emeralde. In the other direction, the Greek word had an earlier form maragdos, which is apparently of Semitic origin, from the root b-r-q, to shine, flash in darkness (compare Akkadian barruktu and Hebrew bareket for emerald).
---L.
