| 词源 |
arrowroot. The Arawak Indians of the Caribbean Islands called this plant (Maranta arundinacea) aru-aru, “meal of meals,” because they thought it highly nutritious. It would have been more precise for English speakers to name the plant “aru- root” when they learned of it, but the plant was also a valuable medicine used to draw poison from the wounds caused by poi- soned arrows. Speakers thus associated “aru” with arrow and folk etymology added arrowroot to the dictionaries; the word is recorded as early as 1696. |