- 1苦艾（植物）；苦艾的味道極苦，苦艾酒 absinthe 就是用它做的。引申義指「痛苦、辛酸」，多用於文學或聖經翻譯，中文常譯作「苦膽」「辛酸」。
Wormwood is a plant — a grey-green herb with a bitter taste. Two things to know about it. First, the plant itself: people have used it for centuries in medicine (to kill stomach worms, among other things) and in drinks. It is what gives absinthe its taste, and it is also in , the wine used in cocktails. Second, and this is where students meet it in books: because the taste is so bitter, 'wormwood' has become a word for bitterness itself — for the sour, painful feeling left by loss, jealousy, or defeat. The Bible uses it this way, and so does older English writing: 'the memory was wormwood to him' means the memory was bitter to him. You will also meet the fixed pair 'gall and wormwood', two bitter things together, meaning deep bitterness. This second use is formal and literary, not something you would say to a friend. The name is one of the great English accidents. It has nothing to do with worms or with wood. Old English called the plant 'wermōd'; over the centuries English speakers heard the two halves as the familiar words 'worm' and 'wood' and re-spelled it to match — helped, no doubt, by the fact that the plant really was used against worms. The same Old English word travelled through French and Italian and came back to English as '', so wormwood and are the same word twice.
組成看起來像 worm（蟲）+ wood（木頭），其實不是——這是「民間詞源」：古英文原本是 wermōd，跟蟲和木頭都無關，後代英語使用者聽成熟悉的字，就照著改了拼法。同一個古字經過法文、義大利文再回到英文，變成 vermouth（味美思酒）。
同家族的字
- vermouththe same ancient word, taken back into English by way of German Wermut and French; a doublet of wormwood.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Wormwoodname
- 1
ChristianityA star or angel that appears in the Book of Revelation, turning waters bitter and poisonous.
- And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
- 2
A surname.
- Having got the address from the school records, Miss Honey set out to walk from her own home to the Wormwoods’ house shortly after nine.
wormwoodnoun/ˈwɜːm.wʊd/
- 1
An intensely bitter herb (Artemisia absinthium and similar plants in genus Artemisia) used in medicine, in the production of absinthe and vermouth, and as a tonic.
- But as I said, / When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple / Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, / To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!
- Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.
- 2
Something that causes bitterness or affliction; a cause of mortification or vexation.
- The irony of this reply was wormwood to Zeluco; he fell into a gloomy fit of musing, and made no farther inquiry […].
- Yet I think the Archdeacon, a "new man," to whom the aristocratic Canon's popularity was wormwood, did dislike him.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。