I was recently thinking about aspergillums, the sprinklers used at Mass (and elsewhere) to disperse Holy Water. I didn’t imagine the silver sticks with a ball on the end, but a rustic aspergillum made of a plant; the sort of thing Moses would have whipped up to sling a bull’s blood on Israelites. And I thought: wouldn’t a bundle of asparagus make a fine aspergillum? And then: could the words be related? Let’s see.
Asparagus comes from Late Old English sparage, from Medieval Latin sparagus; from Latin asparagus, from Gk. asparagos, ασπάραγος; from Persian asparag, meaning “sprout” or “shoot,” from the Proto-Indo-European stem -sphereg- “to scatter.” (In England the plant is also called “sparrowgrass,” a vernacular play on “asparagus”)
It’s amazing how sometimes a word remains recognizable across millennia, miles, and culture.
Aspergillum comes from Latin aspergere, [ad-spergere] “to sprinkle on,” from spargere, to scatter [also the root for disperse], from the same Proto-Indo-European stem -sphereg- “to scatter.” So the words do come from a common root. I doubt that anyone has ever grabbed a modern asparagus to sprinkle with, though; rather, an aspergillum was made by bundling whatever “sprouts or shoots” were handy. But look at this wild asparagus:
You could sprinkle a regiment with that fistful. (Looks like wheat, doesn’t it… they’re both a type of grass.)
Then I wondered if the -sphereg- root was also the source for words such as spring and sprinkle, especially considering what an aspergillum is for. Turns out there are two close roots -sphereg-, and -spergh-. They both overlap in a general sense of sprinkling, scattering; and have some shades of meaning unique to each. To me, -spergh- seems to be the better root for asparagus, but my Indo-European reference says otherwise. Considering the alternate pronunciation and spelling of aspharagus which is as old as Greek, the difference may be academic anyway. I suppose both roots come from an earlier common source which would predate Indo-European; but it’s interesting to see that by 10,000 BC, give or take a millennia, that such fine distinctions in sound and meaning were already developing.
Christian LeBlanc
Christian is a New Evangelizin' Bible-Belt revert who catechizes 6th graders straight from Scripture. (https://www.createspace.com/3835986) He belongs to St. Mary's Parish in Greenville, SC.