'Mistletoe' comes directly from Old English mistiltan. There's general agreement the -tan element means 'twig' and comes from an old Germanic root with the same meaning. The first element mistle is less straightforward. It's derived from missel, an old word for, well, mistletoe and the origins of this are less clear.
One theory is that it's from a root that meant something like 'urine' or 'feces', from the fact that mistletoe seeds are spread in bird droppings. If so it would be related to 'micturate', i.e. urination.
But many, many plants are spread by bird droppings, so why should mistletoe be singled out in this respect?
Another possibility that mistletoe is named for a related concept of something sticky, and this is plausible, because the berries of mistletoe are indeed very sticky and do adhere to birds' beaks and plumage and get spread that way.
Some support might be offered to this theory from the fact that the Latin word for mistletoe is viscum, which also meant something sticky, and from which we get viscous.
As an aside, the French for mistletoe is gui, and this is one of those words that has endured some surprising changes. It's said that viscum evolved first into wiscum, under Germanic influence, then into gwy,guy and finally gui. (At this point you might be wondering about 'gooey' but sadly there is no connection that we know of.)
The Ancient Greek word was ἰξoς and this seems to be cognate withe the Latin viscum; originally it would have started with a 'w' sound ϝιξoς but the ϝ letter was lost from Greek quite early. There are many other examples of words where the Latin and Greek were similar but the V or W disappeared from the Greek word, for example vicus 'village' and οἶκος 'house' (as in ecology and economy)
The fascinating etymology of mistletoe
'Mistletoe' comes directly from Old English mistiltan. There's general agreement the -tan element means 'twig' and comes from an old Germanic root with the same meaning. The first element mistle is less straightforward. It's derived from missel, an old word for, well, mistletoe and the origins of this are less clear.
One theory is that it's from a root that meant something like 'urine' or 'feces', from the fact that mistletoe seeds are spread in bird droppings. If so it would be related to 'micturate', i.e. urination.
But many, many plants are spread by bird droppings, so why should mistletoe be singled out in this respect?
Another possibility that mistletoe is named for a related concept of something sticky, and this is plausible, because the berries of mistletoe are indeed very sticky and do adhere to birds' beaks and plumage and get spread that way.
Some support might be offered to this theory from the fact that the Latin word for mistletoe is viscum, which also meant something sticky, and from which we get viscous.
As an aside, the French for mistletoe is gui, and this is one of those words that has endured some surprising changes. It's said that viscum evolved first into wiscum, under Germanic influence, then into gwy, guy and finally gui. (At this point you might be wondering about 'gooey' but sadly there is no connection that we know of.)
The Ancient Greek word was ἰξoς and this seems to be cognate withe the Latin viscum; originally it would have started with a 'w' sound ϝιξoς but the ϝ letter was lost from Greek quite early. There are many other examples of words where the Latin and Greek were similar but the V or W disappeared from the Greek word, for example vicus 'village' and οἶκος 'house' (as in ecology and economy)