A plant used medicinally to treat canker or similar diseases, or a folk name for a plant with supposed healing properties.
Compound of 'canker' and 'wort' (Old English for plant or herb). Medieval herbals used '-wort' names systematically: 'mugwort,' 'figwort,' 'cankerwort' all suggested medicinal use.
The suffix '-wort' reveals something beautiful about medieval herbalism: when they named a plant 'cankerwort,' they were saying 'this plant cures canker'—names were basically medication labels before pharmaceutical science existed!
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