Nightshades

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of flowering plants belonging to the Solanaceae family, known for some species being toxic and others yielding food crops
2. Various plants within the Solanaceae family, encompassing both edible varieties like tomatoes and poisonous ones like belladonna
3. Members of the Solanaceae family, which include both nutritious fruits and dangerous plants, often characterized by their aromatic qualities

Etymology: The plural form simply names the whole group, so the story sits in the singular. "Nightshade" comes from Old English "nihtscada", a compound of "niht" (night) and "scada" (shade), which in a Germanic setting meant a shadowy plant or a shady spot where a plant grew. The same compound turns up in Dutch "nachtschade" and German "Nachtschatten", showing that speakers of several related languages independently reached for the same image. The sense of "shade" here is shelter or darkness rather than the shade cast by an object, and the "night" element is usually taken to point to the plants' habit of growing in dim, shadowy places such as hedges and waste ground. The name was then applied to the whole family, which includes both the poisonous belladonna and deadly nightshade and the edible potato, tomato, and eggplant.