英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

cameo: cameo: [15] The immediate source of modern English cameo was Italian cameo or cammeo. No one is too sure where it ultimately came from, but it has always been assumed that it had some sort of Oriental source – perhaps Arabic qamaā’īl ‘flower buds’. The original form of the word in English was cameu, which came from Old French camahieu; the Italianate cameo does not appear until the late 17th century.
clove: clove: There are two distinct words clove in English. In clove of garlic [OE] the underlying notion is of ‘cutting’; the head of garlic is as it were ‘divided up’ into separate sections. The word goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *gleubh- ‘cut, carve’, which also produced English cleave and its now archaic past tense clove. Clove the spice [14] originated in the Old French phrase clou de girofle, which meant literally ‘nail of the clove-tree’.

The term ‘nail’ was applied to the tree’s dried unopened flower bud because of a perceived resemblance in shape. (French clou ‘nail’ comes from Latin clāvus, source of English cloy, and French girofle – whence English gillyflower [14], which originally meant ‘clove’ – goes back via medieval Latin caryophyllum to Greek karuóphullon, which literally meant ‘nut leaf’.)
=> cleave; cloy, gillyflower
eucalyptus: eucalyptus: [19] Europeans first encountered eucalyptus trees in Australia at the end of the 18th century. The French botanist Charles Louis l’Héritier based its Latin name, which he coined in 1788, on the fact that its flower buds have a characteristic conical cover (the Greek prefix eumeans ‘well’ and Greek kaluptós means ‘covered’).
nasturtium: nasturtium: [17] The nasturtium plant has a peppery taste (its immature flower buds are often used as an alternative to capers), and tradition has it that the Romans named it nasturtium because its pungency made them pucker up their noses. According to this theory, the word is an alteration of an earlier *nāsitortium, which would have been a compound formed from nāsus ‘nose’ and tort-, the past participle stem of torquēre ‘twist’ (source of English torture).
calyx (n.): 1680s, from Latin calyx, from Greek kalyx "seed pod, husk, outer covering" (of a fruit, flower bud, etc.), from root of kalyptein "to cover, conceal" (see cell). The proper plural is calyces. Some sources connect the word rather with Greek kylix "drinking cup."
cameo (n.): early 15c., kaadmaheu, camew, chamehieux and many other spellings (from early 13c. in Anglo-Latin), "carved precious stone with two layers of colors," from Old French camaieu and directly from Medieval Latin cammaeus, which is of unknown origin, perhaps ultimately from Arabic qamaa'il "flower buds," or Persian chumahan "agate." Transferred sense of "small character or part that stands out from other minor parts" in a play, etc., is from 1928, from earlier meaning "short literary sketch or portrait" (1851), a transferred sense from cameo silhouettes.
gillyflower (n.): type of flowering plant, 1550s, folk etymology alteration (by association with unrelated flower) of gilofre "gillyflower" (late 14c.), originally "clove" (c. 1300), from Old French girofle "clove" (12c.), from Latin caryophyllon, from Greek karyophyllon "clove, nut leaf, dried flower bud of clove tree," from karyon "nut" (see karyo-) + phyllon "leaf" (see phyllo-). The flower so named for its scent.