_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act ii, sc. 1 (249).

(2) _Iago._

We will plant Nettles or sow Lettuce, set Hyssop and weed up Thyme.

_Othello_, act i, sc. 3 (324).
(_See_ HYSSOP.)

(3) And sweet Time true.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.

It is one of the most curious of the curiosities of English plant names
that the Wild Thyme--a plant so common and so widely distributed, and
that makes itself so easily known by its fine aromatic, pungent scent,
that it is almost impossible to pass it by without notice--has yet no
English name, and seems never to have had one. Thyme is the Anglicised
form of the Greek and Latin _Thymum_, which name it probably got from
its use for incense in sacrifices, while its other name of _serpyllum_
pointed out its creeping habit. I do not know when the word Thyme was
first introduced into the English language, for it is another curious
point connected with the name, that _thymum_ does not occur in the old
English vocabularies. We have in AElfric's "Vocabulary," "Pollegia,
hyl-wyrt," which may perhaps be the Thyme, though it is generally
supposed to be the Pennyroyal; we have in a Vocabulary of thirteenth
century, "Epitime, epithimum, fordboh," which also may be the Wild
Thyme; we have in a Vocabulary of the fifteenth century, "Hoc sirpillum,
A{ce} petergrys;" and in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the same date, "Hoc
cirpillum, A{ce} a pellek" (which word is probably a misprint, for in
the "Promptorium Parvulorum," c. 1440, it is "Peletyr, herbe, _serpillum
piretrum_"), both of which are almost certainly the Wild Thyme; while in
an Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary of the tenth or eleventh century we have
"serpulum, crop-leac," _i.e._, the Onion, which must certainly be a
mistake of the compiler. So that not even in its Latin form does the
name occur, except in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," where it is "Tyme,
herbe, _Tima_, _Timum_--Tyme, floure, _Timus_;" and in the "Catholicon
Anglicum," when it is "Tyme; _timum epitimum; flos ejus est_." It is
thus a puzzle how it can have got naturalized among us, for in
Shakespeare's time it was completely naturalized.

I have already quoted Lord Bacon's account of it under BURNET, but I
must quote it again here: "Those flowers which perfume the air most
delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and
c