Poppy: from sleep to remembrance

The word ‘poppy’ keeps close to its Latin root ‘papaver’, the name used by Virgil and Pliny for the bright, sleep-bringing plant. Through Old English ‘popiġ’ and Middle English ‘popy’, it held its shape while neighbouring tongues reshaped the word or found their own. French has ‘pavot’, Italian ‘papavero’, Portuguese ‘papoila’, while German prefers ‘Mohn’ and Dutch ‘klaproos’, the ‘clapper rose’ whose petals move in the wind. The Greeks called it ‘mēkōn’, and the Celts borrowed the Latin line with ‘pabi’ and ‘pabaidh’. Long before it came to mark remembrance, the poppy stood for sleep, death, and renewal.