tansy
/ˈtæn.zi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.17 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A herbaceous plant with yellow flowers, of the genus Tanacetum, especially Tanacetum vulgare.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A dish common in the seventeenth century, made of eggs, sugar, rose water, cream, and the juice of herbs (including tansy), baked with butter in a shallow dish. "Originally flavoured with tansy, but by Pepys's time generally having spinach as its predominant flavouring."
Obsolete; Uncountable
name
A female given name from English.
Example Sentences
- "The sunny afternoon was there, like another land. By the path grew tansy and little trees."
- "Various measures were taken to avoid it, most popular being the suspension of certain herbs and tree branches over the doorways of dwellings and stables. Commonly used greenery were tansy, honesty, garlic, St. John's Wort, mountain ash, roadside verbena."
- "I had a pretty dinner for them; viz., a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowle of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tanzy and two neats' tongues, and cheese the second; and were very merry all the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolette."
- "(I love romantic folksy English names like Tansy and Violet, Ralph likes Mitfordesque names like Pamela and Daphne)"
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English tansy, tansey, syncopic forms of earlier tanesie, tanesei, from Old French tanesie, tanoisie, tanasie, tanaisie, from Medieval Latin tanacetum, atanacetum, attested since the 8th century, of obscure origin, speculated from Ancient Greek ἀθανασία (athanasía, “immortality”) owing to hallucinations from the thujone in the plant, else from taenia (“tapeworm”) due to its primary use against parasites by which reason it is called in Arabic حَشِيشَة الدُود (ḥašīša ad-dūd, literally “worm herb”), otherwise a Berber borrowing like tagetes.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: tansy, tanesie, tanacetum, ἀθανασία, -
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈtæn.zi/
- British English: /ˈtanzi/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Food.
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
bushy seaside tansy
camphor dune tansy
common tansy
double tansy
goose tansy
northern dune tansy
sheep tansy
tansy mustard