laburnum

Latin laburnum

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ləˈbɝnəm/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ləˈbɜːnəm/

laburnum (plural laburnums)

1. Any tree of genus Laburnum. They have bright yellow flowers and are poisonous.
   • 1891, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray:

     Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs[.]

   • 1950, C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Collins, 1998, Chapter 11,

     The trees began to come fully alive. The larches and birches were covered with green, the laburnums with gold.

   Synonyms: golden chain, golden rain

• alburnum

Unknown. Some possibilities include:[1]

• from Etruscan, due to the -rno- element as also in vīburnum, alburnus;
• from a Mediterranean substrate word of the form *lapa or *laba “rock” (Latin lapis), in reference to the terrain where the plant grows;
• if the first element is Latin (through folk etymology or otherwise), this might be labrum (“a lip”) or lābor (“to glide down”) +‎ -urnus depending on the length of the vowel. For the former derivation compare Old English smǣre (“lip(s)”), Danish smære (“clover”), Icelandic smæra (“bermuda buttercup”).[2]

Compare labrūsca.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /laˈbur.num/, [ɫ̪äˈbʊrnʊ̃ˑ]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /laˈbur.num/, [läˈburnum]
• Note: the length of the first vowel is unknown.

laburnum n (genitive laburnī); second declension

1. plant of the genus Laburnum, golden chain

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• “laburnum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• laburnum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette