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RACEME (n. pl. -S)
Definition(s):
- (n.) a cluster-like arrangement of flowers along an axis
- (n.) a cluster of berries
Useful information for game players:
- Front hooks: (none)
- Back hooks: -D, -S
- Anagrams: AMERCE
- Longer extensions: (none)
- Wraparounds: EMBracemeNT, EMBracemeNTS
- Other Spellings: (none)
- Related Forms: RACEMED, RACEMOSE, RACEMOUS and more distantly RACEMIC, RACEMATE, RACEMISM, RACEMIZE, RACEMOID, RACEMIZATION
Epilogue:
The Latin root racemus (“bunch of grapes”) has spawned a cluster of words. It is behind the botanical word RACEME and the adjectival forms RACEMED, RACEMOSE, and RACEMOUS. The words RACEMIC, RACEMATE, RACEMISM, RACEMIZE, RACEMOID, and RACEMIZATION, all of which refer to a type of chemical compound, are also derived from the same root (because a type of the compound can be obtained from grape juice).
Even more interestingly, the common word RAISIN is from the same root. Today, grapes are grapes, and raisins are raisins, but the distinction was not always so clear. In Anglo-Norman and Old French, the word RAISIN meant “grape,” and it was often used similarly in English up through the 1600s. After that period, the word tended to be used only to mean dried grapes (i.e. raisins) or to refer to a purplish-brown color suggestive of them. The phrase “raisins of the sun” was sometimes used to emphasize that one meant dried grapes, as when William Bullein wrote “Raisins of the sunne be very holsome” in a 1558 medical treatise — hundreds of years before Sun-Maid Seedless Raisins hit the market.
This week’s theme:
A cluster of words pertaining to grapes
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