herb

«herb» in Mova's early modern english dictionary: plant — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

kind

archaic sense

modern equivalent

plant

part of speech

noun

meaning for a pupil

Any green plant, including grass and plants grown for food. tree →

how it differs from today

Today a herb is a plant such as mint or basil that is used to flavour food. In these texts it means any green plant, as in "herb of the field" and "green herb", which is an old sense.

examples

• Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. (Torah GEN.3.18, JPS 1917) tree →
• "In the fourth glass is neither herb, bird, nor urchin. (Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen) tree →
• Every moving thing that liveth shall be for food for you; as the green herb have I given you all. (Torah GEN.9.3, JPS 1917) tree →

primary record

herb

tests

rate: sense (≥3 uses in the Torah, ≥10× EWT there, Wiktionary: an archaic sense); corpora 62 (Torah 13, tales 49, Sefer Yetzirah 0); EWT 0; ratio 7.0 (Torah alone 30.3); Wiktionary archaic (a sense)

In the corpora

• Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.
• Every moving thing that liveth shall be for food for you; as the green herb have I given you all.
• How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of the whole field wither?
• For they shall soon wither like the grass, and fade as the green herb.
• And did eat up every herb in their land, and did eat up the fruit of their ground.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «herb» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.