Green and Groenten: From Growth to Vegetables

I took this photo in a Flemish supermarket over the summer. The sign reads groenten — the Dutch word for vegetables. It looks close to English green, and that’s no coincidence. Both go back to the same ancient root meaning ‘to grow’. In English we still talk about eating our ‘greens’. Dutch makes the link even clearer: groen is ‘green’, groente is ‘a vegetable’, and groenten are vegetables. This word card follows the path from Proto-Indo-European ghreh₁- (‘to grow’) through Germanic, Latin, and beyond.