Gee, My Shirt Smells Terrific!

Growing up, my parents thought I was anemic so they forced me to eat liver. It was (almost) enough to drive me to vegetarianism. My efforts to avoid eating the wretched meat were clever, but often ill-fated, the result of which was a confrontation where I was defiant and my folks were just plain livid. Oops, I did it again. Liver. Livid. Guess where I’m going with this?

Our IE root today is (s)leiә. (The ‘(s)’ means the s sound often gets lost in words downstream from the root.) It means blue or plum colored. The liver organ is strikingly plum colored or at least it was before I flushed it down the toilet. To be livid means that you are “yelling ‘til you’re blue in the face” or at least that’s how I remember the scolding* I got for flushing the liver down the toilet.

Want a word where the (s) hung aournd? Sloe gin is made from juniper berries which happen to be blue.

The last word to mention is lavender, a bluish or plum colored flower. Its name derives from its color, but there is an “association” with another word. When we want to wash our hands, we go to the lavatory (and use lava soap?). When we wash our clothes we go to the laundry. Laundry and lavatory derive from the IE root leu(ә), close to (s)leiә (blue), but very different meaning. Lavender often gets associated laundry because has long been popular to add the fragrant flower to the wash… which is why my t-shirt smells so good.

*We patched things up, I’m not anemic, and my mom is 95 and happily lives in my home today.