wormwood

name

1. A star or angel that appears in the Book of Revelation, turning waters bitter and poisonous.

   “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

2. A surname.

   “Having got the address from the school records, Miss Honey set out to walk from her own home to the Wormwoods’ house shortly after nine.”

noun

Etymology: From Middle English wormwode, a folk etymology (as if worm + wood) of wermode (“wormwood”), from Old English wermōd (“wormwood, absinthe”), from Proto-West Germanic *warjamōdā (“wormwood”). Cognate with Middle Low German wermode, wermede (“wormwood”), German Wermut (“wormwood”). Doublet of vermouth.

1. An intensely bitter herb (Artemisia absinthium and similar plants in genus Artemisia) used in medicine, in the production of absinthe and vermouth, and as a tonic.

   “But as I said, / When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple / Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, / To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!”

   “Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.”

2. Something that causes bitterness or affliction; a cause of mortification or vexation.

   “The irony of this reply was wormwood to Zeluco; he fell into a gloomy fit of musing, and made no farther inquiry […].”

   “Yet I think the Archdeacon, a "new man," to whom the aristocratic Canon's popularity was wormwood, did dislike him.”