A Glossary of Botanic Terms, with Their Derivation and Accent
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A GLOSSARY OF BOTANIC TERMS WITH THEIR DERIVATION AND ACCENT BY BENJAMIN DAYDON JACKSON LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1900 CONTENTS Pages PREFACE v-xi Plan of the Work ... xii GLOSSARY .... 1-294 Additions during Printing . 295-319 APPENDIX— A. Signs and Abbreviations ..... 322 B. The Pronunciation of Latin and Latinized Words . 322 C. The Use of the Terms "Right" and "Left" . 323 D. Bibliography . .... 324-326 ERRATA ... ... 327 " Every other authout may aspire to praise, the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach." De Samuel Johnson. PEEFACE Nearly thirty-nine years ago Dr M. C. Cooke published his " Manual,'' which reached a second edition nine years afterwards. Since then no botanic dictionary has been published in Britain, while during the period which has passed since then botany has undergone a momentous change. While systematic botany has been actively prosecuted, the other departments of morphology, physiology and minute anatomy have been energetically pursued by the help of improved appliances and methods of investigation. One result has been a large increase of technical terms, which are only partially accounted for in the various text-books. The time seemed therefore ripe for a new Glossary which should include these terms, and, encouraged by the help of many botanic friends, I have drawn up the present volume. After the work had been partly written, and announced for publication, Mr Crozier's " Dictionary " first came under my notice. I have consequently compared it with my manuscript, and inserted many words which had not come within my knowledge, or had been rejected by me, as will be seen by the acknowledgment in each case. Mr Heinig's " Glossary " only reached London after the early sheets were printed. The task of selecting what terms should be included in any branch of science ofiers many difiiculties : in the case of botany, it is closely linked on with zoology and general biology, with geology as regards fossil plants, with pharmacy, chemistry, and the cultivation of plants in the garden or the field. How far it is advisable to include terms from those overlapping sciences which lie on the borderland is a question on which no two people might think alike. I have given every word an indepen- dent examination, so as to take in all which seemed needful, all, in fact, which might be fairly expected, and yet to exclude technical terms which really belong to another science. Words PREFACE in common use frequently have technical meanings, and must be included ; other technical words are foreign to botany, and must be excluded. Thus " entire " must be defined in its botanic sense, and such purely geologic terms as Triassic and Pleistocene must be passed by. The total number of rare alkaloids and similar bodies recorded in pharmacologic and chemical works, if included, would have extended this Glossary to an inconvenient size ; I have therefore only enumerated those best known or of more frequent mention in literature, or interesting for special reasons. Many words only to be found in dictionaries have been passed by ; each dictionary I have consulted contains words ap- parently peculiar to it, and some have been suspected of being purposely coined to round oflf a set of terms. The foundations of the list here presented are A. Gray's " Botanical Text-Book,'' Lindley's " Glossary," and Henslow's "Dictionary," as set forth in the Bibliography. To these terms have been added others extant in the various modern text-books and current literature, noted in the course of reading, or found by special search. The abstracts published in the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society have afforded many English equivalents of foreign terms. In drawing up definitions, the terms used to denote colour were found to be so discordant that I was compelled to make a special study of that department, and the result will be found in the Jowrnal of Botany, xxxvii. (1899) 97-105, where are also noted some unusual colour-terms not brought into the present work. The total numbers included in this Glossary amount to nearly 15,000, that is, nearly three times as many as in any other previous work in the language. The derivations have been carefully checked, but as this book has no pretension to be a philological work, the history of the word is not attempted; thus in "etiolate " I have contented myself with giving the proximate derivation, whilst the great Oxford dictionary cites a host of intermediate forms deduced from stipella. The meaning appended to the roots is naturally a rough one, for to render adequately all that may be conveyed by many of the roots is manifestly impossible when a single word must serve. The accent has been added in accordance best with the discoverable usage ; where pronunciation varies I ; PREFACE have tried to follow the best usage; in some words such as " medullary " I have given the accent as it is always spoken, though all the dictionaries, except Henslow's, accent it as " med'ullary." When words have become thoroughly anglicised, it would have been mere pedantry to accent them otherwise ; we say or'ator, not as in Latin, ora'tor. The accent does not imply syllabic division, but when the accent immediately follows a vowel, that vowel is long if one or more consonants intervene, then the vowel is short ; thus ca'nus, cas'sus, as though they were printed ca-nus, cds-sm ; in a few instances the pronunciation is also given when the word would otherwise be doubtful as to sound. The word having grown so much under my hands, it has been my duty to condense the definitions, a difficult matter in many cases, when a longer explanation would have been far easier to draw up. I trust that I have in each case succeeded in setting out the main or central meaning, but many writers have their own modified or restricted meaning of even well-known terms. To still further economise space, words drawn from the same leading word have been grouped into paragraphs, thus obviating the necessity of repeating the leading word with its meaning many times over, and only requiring the additional root to be given; occasionally this has led to the intentional neglect of strict alphabetic sequence. The names of groups of plants have given much trouble ; whilst all proposed terms manifestly could not be included, many have be- come so often quoted as to demand recognition ; as a rule I have not admitted groups of even ordinal value, still less of lower rank. Compound terms have been left out when intermediate between the included seem to require mention meaning of the primitives ; those on special grounds. Authors' names in parentheses, following definitions, are those who have been taken as authority for such definition, and when the actual language is used, it is indicated by quotation marks the authority sometimes coincides with the inventor of the term. Substantives in the headings have been shown by the use of a capital letter, adjectives and other parts of speech by a small letter exceptions being adjectives drawn from a proper name as "Dar- winian," and those which form part of such terms as "Conjoint PREFACE Bundle." Greek is quoted in the original characters, Latin in italic, or where otherwise it would be doubtful, it is indicated ; this is further explained on the page facing page 1 of the Glossary ; the use of small capitals refers the reader to the word so printed for a definition of the term, or to a correlative term. The Appendixes hardly need any detailed explanation; it will be seen that the Bibliography is a selected list of works chiefly in alphabetic form, arranged chronologically. General dictionaries, and large works in which technical terms form only a small pro- portion of the whole, have been omitted. The progress of the work through the press has occupied twelve months ; advantage has been taken of this to record new terms which have been published during that time, as well as those con- tributed by friends from obscure sources, some previously rejected, and a few which had been overlooked ; many in the last category are directly due to the defective indexes in certain standard works. No attempt has been made to bring the book beyond the date of 1st January 1900, but I have done my best to include all valid terms up to the first day of this year. The pleasant task now remains of acknowledging most heartily and gratefully the invaluable help I have derived from a host of friends during the progress of the work. Dr D. H. Scott, F.R.S., not only encouraged me to undertake the labour, but has always been ready to help with his advice, and has read a part of the proofs ; Mr A. Gbpp, of the British Museum, has read the whole in proof and part in revise ; he has spared neither time nor trouble to ascertain the correctness of the derivations and accents throughout, as well as in the special branch of descriptive botany which is under his charge ; Professor Haktog, D.Sc, of Cork, has had the entire proof through his hands, and has improved many definitions; Mr H. H. W. Pearson has read nearly all the slip-proof, sug- gested improvements, and helped in the compilation of the work in many ways. To these four gentlemen I am especially indebted for their kindly undertaking a very troublesome and irksome task. Other friends at Kew and the British Museum have also generously aided me in response to questions when drafting the manuscript. Mr G.