- Officinalis
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Officinalis is a Medieval Latin epithet denoting substances or organisms – mainly plants – with uses in medicine and herbalism. It commonly occurs as a species name of such organisms.
Etymology
The word officinalis literally means "of or belonging to an officina" - the officina being the storeroom of a monastery, where medicines and other necessaries were kept. This was derived from the classical Latin word officina, "workshop", a contraction of opificina, from opifex (gen. opificis) "worker, maker, doer" (from opus "work") + -fex, -ficis, "one who does," from facere "do, perform".[1] When Linnaeus invented the binomial system of nomenclature, he gave the specific name "officinalis", in the 1735 (1st Edition) of his Systema Naturae, to herbs and plants whose medical use had been established in preceding millennia.[2]
Species
- Species Latin binomial name abbreviations
References
- ^ Online Etymology Dictionary, entry "officinalis", accessed May 3, 2010.
- ^ Pearn J.,"On 'officinalis' the names of plants as one enduring history of therapeutic medicine. Vesalius. 2010 Dec;Suppl:24-8 Authors:
Categories:- Latin words found in species names
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