hardy cereal plant, Old English bærlic, apparently originally an adjective, "of barley," from bere "barley" (from Proto-Germanic *bariz, *baraz) + -lic "body, like." The first element is related to Old Norse barr "barley," and cognate with Latin far (genitive farris) "coarse grain, meal" (see farina).
c. 1300, erbe "non-woody plant," especially a leafy vegetable used for human food, from Old French erbe "grass, herb, plant fed to animals" (12c., Modern French herbe), from Latin herba "grass, an herb; herbage, turf, weeds" (source also of Spanish yerba, Portuguese herva, Italian erba). The form of the English word was refashioned after Latin since 15c., but the h- was mute until 19c. Slang meaning "marijuana" is attested from 1960s. The native word is wort.
"rope-making fiber manufactured from agave and other tropical plants, 1883, short for Sisal hemp or grass (1843), from Sisal, the port in Yucatan from which the fiber was exported.
city of Thuringia, Germany, site of a famous university that dates to 16c.; attested from 9c. as Jani, from Old High German jani "strip of mown grass," ultimately from PIE root *ei- "to go."
Old English spir "a sprout, shoot, spike, blade, tapering stalk of grass," from Proto-Germanic *spiraz (source also of Old Norse spira "a stalk, slender tree," Dutch spier "shoot, blade of grass," Middle Low German spir "a small point or top"), from PIE *spei- "sharp point" (see spike (n.1)). Meaning "tapering top of a tower or steeple" first recorded 1590s (a sense attested in Middle Low German since late 14c. and also found in the Scandinavian cognates).
c. 1300, "land covered with vegetation suitable for grazing;" also "grass eaten by cattle or other animals," from Old French pasture "fodder, grass eaten by cattle" (12c., Modern French pâture), from Late Latin pastura "a feeding, grazing," from Latin pastus, past participle of pascere "to feed, graze," from PIE root *pa- "to feed." To be out to pasture in the figurative sense of "retired" is by 1945, from where horses were sent (ideally) after their active working life.
also cariboo, "American reindeer," 1660s, from Canadian French caribou, from Micmac (Algonquian) kaleboo or a related Algonquian name, literally "pawer, scratcher," from its kicking snow aside to feed on moss and grass.
"to spread" (new-mown grass for drying), c. 1300, from an unrecorded Old English *teddan or from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse teðja "to spread manure." Related to German verzetteln "to scatter, squander." Related: Tedding; tedder.
