A plant, particularly one associated with cows or found in cow pastures; a folk name for various herbs or weeds.
Compound of 'cow' and 'thwort' or 'wort' (Old English 'wyrt', meaning plant or herb). Many wild plants acquired 'cow' prefixes because they thrived in pastures or were used for cattle.
In medieval herbalism, plants got 'cow-' names when they either healed cattle, grew where cattle grazed, or were used by farmers to treat cattle diseases—making these plant names a map of pre-veterinary animal medicine.
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