Carnation

The Latin word “carō” means “flesh”. When I saw this, the first thing that came to my mind was the word carnival. This word seems to come from the Latin expression carne levare meaning “remove flesh”¹. It is a festival that takes place before Lent, where some people practice fasting, especially from meat and alcohol.

Carrion, carnage, carnivore, and carnal are English words directly related to animal flesh. Carrion means “dead or decaying flesh”, while carnage means “a heap of dead bodies” (hence “the slaughter of a great number, esp. of men”). Carnivore is a combination of carō and devour, and the latter is a common English word meaning “to eat voraciously”, which makes perfect sense. Carnal means “characterized by the flesh or the body”.

Other words figuratively related to flesh include incarnate and carnation. Incarnate means “to embody (in flesh)” as a verb and “embodied in flesh” as an adjective. It is interesting that the name of the flower, carnation, also derives from this origin in terms of its color. The next time you see a carnation, you may notice that its color somehow resembles the color of animal flesh….