Many English speakers probably know that shamrock essentially means “clover.” But what many may not know is that the noun first appeared in 1571 in British author Edmund Campion's History of Ireland, and Campion spelled it shamrote. Campion derived the word from the Irish Gaelic seamrog, which is the diminutive form of the Irish seamar and means “little clover.” The modern English spelling didn't appear until six years after Campion's coining, however, when the Dubliner Richard Stanihurst, an acquaintance of Campion's, used shamrock in his book A Treatise Containing a Plain and Perfect Description of Ireland.
©2018 Michael R. Gates
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