absinthium

From Middle English absinthium, from Latin absinthium, from Ancient Greek ἀψίνθιον (apsínthion). Doublet of absinthe.

• (US) IPA^(key): /æbˈsɪn.θi.m̩/

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absinthium (uncountable)

1. (now rare) Common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), an intensely bitter herb used in the production of absinthe and vermouth, and as a tonic. [First attested around 1150 to 1350.]^[1]
2. The dried leaves and flowering tops of the wormwood plant.^[2]
3. absinthe oil

• bismuthian

• apsinthium, absynthium

From Ancient Greek ἀψίνθιον (apsínthion, “wormwood”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /abˈsin.tʰi.um/, [äpˈs̠ɪn̪t̪ʰiʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /abˈsin.ti.um/, [äbˈsin̪t̪ium]

absinthium n (genitive absinthiī or absinthī); second declension

1. wormwood
2. an infusion of wormwood sometimes masked with honey due to its bitter taste
3. (figuratively) something which is bitter but wholesome
   • c. 35 CE – 100 CE, Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 3.1.5:

     Sed nos veremur ne parum hic liber mellis et absinthii multum habere videatur

     But I fear that this book will have too little sweetness and too much wormwood.

Second-declension noun (neuter).

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

Borrowings

• “absinthium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• absinthium in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “absinthium”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers