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prettygoodwordkenaf (kuh-NAF) - n., a tropical Asiatic plant (Hibiscus cannabinus), similar to jute, grown for its fiber; the fiber from this plant, used to make rope and paper.
Native to south Asia, but exactly where it originated has been obscured. The name is from Persian, but the ultimate origin is completely unclear: it is one example of cognates of spread across a wide swath from central Europe to central Asia, including Germanic *hanapiz (which gave us hemp), Greek kánnabos (which gave us cannabis), and Sanskrit bhāṅga (in a backwards spelling to avoid a taboo, which gave us both ganja and bhang), among which no one has been able to convincingly identify the source.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
Native to south Asia, but exactly where it originated has been obscured. The name is from Persian, but the ultimate origin is completely unclear: it is one example of cognates of spread across a wide swath from central Europe to central Asia, including Germanic *hanapiz (which gave us hemp), Greek kánnabos (which gave us cannabis), and Sanskrit bhāṅga (in a backwards spelling to avoid a taboo, which gave us both ganja and bhang), among which no one has been able to convincingly identify the source.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
