laburnum

From Latin laburnum.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ləˈbɝnəm/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ləˈbɜːnəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

laburnum (plural laburnums)

1. Any tree of the genus Laburnum.

   Synonyms: golden chain, golden rain

   • 1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter I, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 1:

     […] Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs[.]

   • 1950, C. S. Lewis, chapter 11, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Collins, published 1998:

     The trees began to come fully alive. The larches and birches were covered with green, the laburnums with gold.

• alburnum

Unknown. Some possibilities include:^[1]

• from Etruscan, due to the -rno- element as also in vīburnum, alburnus;
• from a Mediterranean substrate word of the form *lapa or *laba “rock” (Latin lapis), in reference to the terrain where the plant grows;
• if the first element is Latin (through folk etymology or otherwise), this might be labrum (“a lip”) or lābor (“to glide down”) +‎ -urnus depending on the length of the vowel. For the former derivation compare Old English smǣre (“lip(s)”), Danish smære (“clover”), Icelandic smæra (“bermuda buttercup”).^[2]

Compare labrūsca.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ɫaˈbʊr.nũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [laˈbur.num]
• Note: the length of the first vowel is unknown.

laburnum n (genitive laburnī); second declension

1. plant of the genus Laburnum, golden chain

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• “laburnum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “laburnum”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.