vulgaris

Latin vulgaris is the adjective formed from vulgus, the common people or the crowd. In Rome, the vulgus was everyone outside the elite: not noble, not educated, not wealthy. The word vulgus may connect to a Proto-Indo-European root for multitude or crowd, though its exact prehistory is contested. What is certain is that vulgaris was in circulation before the end of the Republic, appearing in texts by Cicero and Caesar to describe things that were widespread or belonging to common life.

Romans used vulgaris with a mild air of condescension. Vulgaris things were ordinary, available to all, and therefore slightly beneath refinement. When Jerome completed his Latin translation of the Bible around 405 CE, it became known as the Vulgata: Scripture in the tongue of common speech. The name was not an insult but a description. This was the Bible in the language that most people already spoke.

In medieval botanical taxonomy, vulgaris came to mark the standard or typical species of a genus, as opposed to rare or exotic varieties. Doctors and apothecaries used it to mean the species most available in ordinary markets. Rosa vulgaris was the common rose. Lavandula vulgaris was ordinary lavender. Acne vulgaris, coined in the 19th century, named the ordinary, common form of acne that most people encounter.

Carl Linnaeus, working in Uppsala through the mid-18th century, cemented vulgaris in scientific nomenclature. He used it across all kingdoms: Pica pica vulgaris for the common magpie, Octopus vulgaris for the common octopus, Beta vulgaris for the common beet. Today thousands of species carry the epithet, making vulgaris one of the most widely distributed words in all of biological science.