Chardoon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A tall thistle-like Mediterranean plant whose blanched leaf stalks are eaten as a vegetable, closely related to the artichoke
2. An edible Mediterranean thistle relative of the artichoke, grown for its thick, blanched stalks and leaves
3. A spiny perennial plant of the thistle family, native to the Mediterranean, cultivated for its edible stalks

Etymology: The word "chardoon" is an obsolete spelling of "cardoon," the spiny Mediterranean thistle whose blanched stalks are eaten like celery. Its ancestry runs back to Latin "carduus," meaning simply "thistle," which passed into Late Latin as "cardōnem" and then into Old French as "cardon." English borrowed it as the Middle English "cardoun," and the vegetable and the thistle share a single name with the thorny weed that grows wild around the Mediterranean. The spelling we now use is the older one with its last vowel altered. "Cardoon" was later respelled to match the many English nouns ending in "-oon," such as "balloon" and "saloon," so the ending looks more familiar. The earlier "chardoon" is therefore the form that stayed closer to the medieval pattern of the word. Chard, the leafy green, is a close relative of the same root. It and "cardon" are doublets, two words descended from one source that entered English by different routes, so the thistle and the chard share a common ancestor in Latin.