olibanum
Meanings
noun
- A gum resin from trees of the genus Boswellia, formerly used as a medicine and now mainly as incense.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Borrowed from Medieval Latin olibanum, from Latin oleum libani, the first word meaning oil and the second from Ancient Greek λίβανος (líbanos, “frankincense (Boswellia sacra)”), from a Semitic source, compare Proto-Semitic *laban- (“white”). Cognate with Biblical Hebrew לְבוֹנָה (l'voná, “frankincense”), Arabic لبان (lubān, “frankincense”). (Compare benzoin for a similar process of metanalysis.) Doublet of oliban.
Synonyms
Derived words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.