Word of the Day: May 24, 2009 - honey

honey (huhn-ee) - noun

Honey is "a sweet, viscid fluid produced by bees from the nectar collected from flowers, and stored in nests or hives as food."

First used in the written form before the year 900. Our Indo-European ancestors were very fond of honey, and their word for it, based on melit-, has come down to many modern European languages, such as French and Spanish miel, Italian miele, and Welsh mel (it also contributed to the English mellifluous, mildew, and molasses). The Germanic languages, however, have not persisted with it. Their words for "honey" (which also include German honig, Dutch honing, Swedish honung, and Danish honning) come from a prehistoric West and North Germanic khunagom or khunanggom. This may originally have described the colorof honey; it has been linked with Greek knekos (pale yellow) and Sanskrit kancana- (golden).

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