tulip

Word History: The word tulip, like the cultivated tulip plant itself, has its origins in the Middle East. The tulip figures frequently in Persian verse, where its red color evokes the blood of martyrs and the fire of love, and in Turkey, tulips are associated with the delicate refinement and luxury that characterized the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power. Western European visitors to the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s were astonished by the beautiful expanses of tulips cultivated by the sultans. Tulips were brought to western Europe from the Ottoman Empire sometime in the same century, and the English word tulip ultimately stems from Ottoman Turkish tülbend (modern Turkish tülbent), the word for a piece of muslin used as a headscarf or head covering. The Turkish word for a turban seems to have been used for the flower in western European languages because a fully opened tulip was thought to resemble a turban, the typical headwear of men in the land where tulips originated. (The actual Turkish word for a tulip is lale, from Persian lâle.) Turkish tülbend, used as a name for the tulip, was borrowed into many languages of western Europe as the popularity of the tulip spread, and by the late 1500s it had reached English, in which it was at first variously spelled tulipa, tulipant, and tulip. The English word turban, also first recorded in English in the 1500s, can be traced to Ottoman Turkish tülbend, too.