Rosewood is a hard, dark reddish-brown wood, the kind used for fine furniture, guitar backs, and piano parts — things people pay a lot for. It does not come from a rose bush. The name started because some of these trees give off an oil that smells a little like roses; later, people kept the name for woods that simply look rose-brown. Though actually, “rosewood” is not one single tree. It is a group of tropical hardwoods, and the best of it is now rare. In a shop, if someone says a table is rosewood, they mean the colour, the weight, and the price — not a bouquet. English also uses rosewood for the colour itself, the way we say “chocolate” for a brown.