Dot Wordsworth

Rocket

An etymology lesson to distract my husband from the lack of a rocket lettuce shortage

issue 18 February 2017

‘It is rocket science,’ said my husband waving a pinnately lobed leaf snatched from his restaurant salad. He doesn’t much like rocket salad and wishes all supplies had perished along with the lettuces of Spain. So as a distraction I tried telling him that rocket leaves were connected with street urchins, caterpillars, caprices and hedgehogs.

The herb rocket is older in English than the sky-rocket, which appeared no earlier than 1566.

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