Archive

Week sixty-four: CHYPRE (probability 19726), by David Sutton

CHYPRE is a perfume made from sandalwood oils; it takes its name from the French word for Cyprus, the original source of the product. There are many other pleasantly exotic words for plant oils, resins etc; here are just a few of them:

CONIMA	the fragrant resin of a tropical American tree; this word is from the Carib language
COPAIBA, COPAIVA	a transparent resin obtained from certain S. American trees, from the Tupi language
DAMAR, DAMMAR	a hard resin used in making varnish, from the Malay
ELEMI	a fragrant resinous substance obtained from various tropical trees, from the Arabic al-lami via Spanish
GALBANUM	a gum resin exuding from the stems of certain Asiatic umbelliferous plants, ultimately from the Hebrew helbenah
GARJAN, GURJUN	a thin balsam or wood oil derived from an East Indian tree
LABDANUM, LADANUM	a gum resin gathered from certain Oriental species of Cistus
OPOPANAX	an aromatic gum resin formerly used in medicine; now used in perfume and some incenses. From the Greek opos, juice + panax, a panacea.
PROPOLIS	a word well-known to apiarists, the resin of tree buds collected by bees
SANDARAC, SANDARACH	the resin of a tropical tree, powdered to form pounce and used in making varnish. (Pounce in this sense is the stuff sprinkled over parchments to stop the ink running).

    Tweet