arum
noun
Example Sentences
Emily Deletter, The Enquirer, 20 July 2022 Arum italicum or Italian arum is a cool season shade perennial. Janet Carson, Arkansas Online, 20 Dec. 2021 Blackberry, tree-of-heaven, invasive knotweeds, garlic mustard, lesser celandine, Italian arum and horsetail are some examples that are difficult to control. oregonlive, 3 June 2021 If the arum is located across a larger area, herbicides are an option but even in strong formulations will mostly just set it back rather than kill it, due to its thick waxy leaves and multitude of bulbs. oregonlive, 27 Mar. 2021 Ivy arum, Pothos 9 Octopus tree, Brassia actinophylla 10. Los Angeles Times, 28 Feb. 2020 On a precociously hot day in May, Avent takes me on a golf cart tour past fields of arums, lycoris, trilliums, crinums, epimediums, colocasias, baptisias and gingers — the botany begins to blur after a few hours under the beating Carolina sun. Adrian Higgins, Washington Post, 17 Sep. 2019 Another big category to keep your pets from gnawing is aroids (aka arums), the group of plants including philodendrons, pothos, peace lily (Spathiphyllum), arrowhead plants (Syngonium), elephant ear (Caladium), Dieffenbachia and others. Kenneth Setzer, miamiherald, 14 June 2018 This arum thrives in partial shade or sun, so would be ideal with hostas in a partly-shaded bed. Margaret Lauterbach, idahostatesman, 26 Apr. 2017 See More Word History
borrowed from New Latin Arum (Linnaeus), a genus name, going back to Latin, "any of several plants of the genus Arum," borrowed from Greek áron "the plant Arum italicum or a related species," perhaps borrowed from Egyptian ʿr "bulrush, reed"
Note: The Egyptian source was hypothesized by Bertrand Hemmerdinger in "Noms communs grecs d'origine égyptienne," Glotta, Band 46, Heft 3/4 (1968), p. 244, citing Erman-Grapow, Wörterbuch der aegyptischen Sprache, Band 1, p. 208. Hemmerdinger takes up the issue again in "De la méconnaissance de quelques étymologies grecques," Glotta, Band 48, Heft 1/2 (1970), p. 54, where he posits Semitic or Egyptian sources for words of uncertain origin in Chantraine's etymological dictionary. He draws attention to the passage (19.33) in Pliny's Historia naturalis in which "aron" is said to be a name used in Egypt: "Est inter genera et quod in Aegypto aron vocant." If this plant is correctly identified as Colocasia antiquorum, however—the suggestion in Liddell and Scott's dictionary—it can scarcely have any connection with an Egyptian word meaning "reed" or "rush," as neither this plant nor Arum italicum has any resemblance to a reed.
14th century, in the meaning defined above