Rosemary is a bush with thin, needle-like leaves that smell sharp and clean. Cooks pull the leaves off and use them as a herb, especially with roast potatoes, lamb, and bread; you can also grow the whole bush in a pot. The same word names the plant and the leaves you cook with. Though actually, the spelling looks like Rose + Mary, and people have told that story for centuries — a flower for the Virgin Mary. The older name, however, is from Latin for “dew of the sea” (rōs + marīnus). English later reshaped it to sound like rose and Mary. So the letters look like a flower and a woman’s name, but the plant is not a rose, and the first meaning was sea-dew, not a saint. (Rosemary as a girl’s name is a later, separate story; this entry is the herb.)