Feltwyrt

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic name, recorded in Old English herbals, for a plant with a soft, woolly-textured leaf
2. A historical English term for a downy-leaved herb, used in early medicinal plant lists
3. Old English plant name referring to a herb whose leaves are covered in fine, felt-like hairs

Etymology: Feltwyrt is an Old English word, recorded in the glossaries and medical texts of the period, and it is a compound of "feld" (field) and "wyrt" (plant, herb), so its literal sense is "field-plant" or "field herb." The Old English wyrt is the ancestor of modern "wort," which survives in names like St. John's wort and in "wort" as a term for an infusion or malt mash. Feltwyrt belongs to the older English practice of naming plants by where they grew, the same habit that gave us plants described as "wood" or "marsh" by their habitat. Because the word is a plain compound built from two well-attested Old English elements, its meaning is transparent: it named a wild herb gathered from open ground rather than a cultivated garden plant. Its exact identity varied among the early writers who used it, so scholars generally treat the term as a general label for field herbs rather than a single fixed species.