asparagus [OE] The vegetable we know as asparagus was originally called sparagus (from medieval Latin), which was later turned into the more English-sounding sparrow-grass [M17th]. This process is called folk etymology, where people modify the form of an unusual word to make it seem to be derived from familiar ones. Sparrow-grass remained the polite name for the vegetable during the 18th century, with only botanists sticking to the spelling asparagus. As the compiler of a pronunciation dictionary wrote in 1791: ‘Sparrow-grass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry.’ It wasn’t until the 19th century that asparagus returned into literary and polite use, leaving sparrow-grass to survive as an English dialect form.