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Show Asparagus. Xo word illustrates the changeable fashions of the English language more curiously than "asparagus." No one could call it "sparrow grass" 'nowadays unless he did not mind being thought an ignoramus or a tiresomely funny man. Yet all through the eighteenth century that was quite the regular way of referring to the delicacy even In elegant ele-gant society. A dictionary of 1T91 says thai " 'sparrow grass' is now so general gen-eral that 'asparagus' has an air of stiffness stiff-ness and pedantry." "Sperage" has been the usual English form in the sixteenth six-teenth century, but in the seventeenth herbalists brought back the original Greek and Latin spelling "asparagus." Pepys varies between "sparrow grass" "sparagus" and " 'sparagus." Xo doubt the eighteenth century's relapse was the last, and the "a" is back for good now. London Chronicle. |