Talk:Ipomoea

Worm

To say it means “worm” is stretching it. [1] Jidanni (talk) 23:47, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jidanni Whatever they may known about edible plants, they know very little about Greek. To start with, the word they say means below, beneath or under is obviously modern Greek υπό (ypó). The equivalent term in Ancient Greek is ὑπό (hupó), which shows up as hypo- in botanical names. The "h" sound, indicated by the rough breathing diacritic (the thing that looks like a curved apostrophe on the first letter) was lost in the transition from Ancient to modern Greek, and the υ started out as an "u" sound, and became more like a German "ü" during later classical times, eventually sounding the same as ι in modern Greek. That means that the first part would have sounded more like English hoop in earlier Greek. The "ἰπ" from Ancient Greek ἴψ (íps) would have sounded like "eep" or "ip". No one who knew anything about Ancient Greek would ever get "ὑπό" and "ἰπό" mixed up. Back when the term was coined, botanists learned Classical Greek and Latin as part of their basic education- that's Ancient Greek, not modern Greek. All the scientific works of the time were written in Latin, so they definitely had a far better understanding of classical languages than the writer of that blog. Besides which, ὑπό (hupó) is a preposition, not a noun, so the semantics suggested don't really work.

That said, the earliest works I can find with the term, like Species plantarum, Hortus Cliffortianus and genera plantarum, don't say anything about where Linnaeus got the name from (Linnaeus rarely, if ever, includes that). Chuck Entz (talk) 06:36, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

That's telling 'em! Thanks.

By the way, I wish w:Ipomoea nil would mention why "nil"? Doesn't nil mean nothing? Jidanni (talk) 03:40, 12 October 2021 (UTC)