gārlēac

Old English gārlēac combined gār (a spear) and lēac (a leek or allium plant). The name described the shape: the pointed cloves of separated garlic bulbs resembled small spear tips. Old English used lēac as a generic term for allium plants — gārlēac (garlic), brādlēac (broad-leek, possibly leek proper), and hnittelēac (what we might call wild garlic). The Anglo-Saxons organized their alliums by shape and flavor.

Garlic has been cultivated in central Asia for at least 5,000 years. Egyptian tomb paintings from 3,200 BCE include garlic. Greek and Roman writers documented its medical uses, its culinary role, and its smell. Pliny the Elder listed 61 garlic remedies in his Naturalis Historia. By the time the Anglo-Saxons were naming their vegetables, garlic had been a human staple for millennia.

Anglo-Saxon herbals — medical texts organizing plant remedies — gave garlic an important place. Bald's Leechbook, the 9th-century medical text, included garlic in remedies for infections and wounds. A 2015 study by microbiologists at the University of Nottingham tested one of these remedies — a mixture of garlic, onion, wine, and oxgall — against MRSA and found it effective. The Old English spear-leek killed modern antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The spear in gārlēac has been forgotten. Garlic contracted from gārlēac as the language simplified, and the internal story of the name — spear-shaped leek — disappeared. The shape-metaphor was perfect: anyone who has separated a garlic bulb has seen the little spears. The Old English name described what everyone could observe.