Myrrh

Last year, in the days before Epiphany (January 6) we looked at great length at the word frankincense, so now it's time to look at one of the other gifts of the Magi: myrrh.

Myrrh is a bitter, aromatic gum resin exuded by various Arabian and African trees of the genus Commiphora and used traditionally in perfumes and medicines. The ancient Egyptians used it for embalming, and thus as one of the gifts of the Magi it is believed to foreshadow the death of Christ.

It is one of a very few words, almost all of them church-related, borrowed from Latin into English during the Old English (pre-1066) period. It had come into Latin from Greek, and ultimately comes from a Semitic root meaning "bitter", making it  related to the Hebrew word maror (bitter herb), used of herbs (usually horseradish) eaten at the Passover Seder service as a reminder of the bitterness of the Israelites' captivity in Egypt.

Myrrh's very odd spelling (all those extra consonants for a word pronounced in British English like "muh") is due to people imitating one of the Latin spellings -- the most complicated one, naturally -- at the Renaissance. For a while in the Middle Ages we flirted with nice, simple "mir", but that would never do. 

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