English

edit

Etymology

edit

From scurvy +‎ wort.

Noun

edit

scurvywort (uncountable)

  1. (now rare) Scurvy-grass (Cochlearia spp.).
    • 1855, Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!:
      in the kitchen beyond, salad in stacks and faggots: salad of lettuce, salad of cress and endive, salad of boiled coleworts, salad of pickled coleworts, salad of angelica, salad of scurvy-wort, and seven salads more; for potatoes were not as yet, and salads were during eight months of the year the only vegetable.
    • 1974, Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal, The Summer Book, Sort Of Books, published 2003, page 115:
      The first to come up was the scurvywort, only an inch high, but vital to seamen who live on ship's biscuit.