Other forms: laurels
The laurel is an evergreen tree whose leaves were woven into crowns for victors. A laurel wreath, crowned with laurel, laurel hedges.
The bay laurel is the one whose leaves are used in cooking. Laurel wreaths crowned victorious generals and poets in the ancient world, which is where laureate comes from — poet laureate, Nobel laureate. Rest on your laurels means to stop trying because of past success, and it is always a criticism. Note that the common garden laurel hedge is usually cherry laurel, which is a different plant and is poisonous.
1nounlaurelAn evergreen tree whose leaves crowned victors.
“The laurel hedge has been there since about 1930.”
laurel is a tree.
LAUREL → what a Nobel LAUREATE is crowned with
A Nobel laureate is crowned with laurel — that is what the word laureate means — and it is the same crown of leaves Caesar wore.
hooks ontocrown
Latin laurus is the tree. Laureate, laurel and the name Laura all descend from it, and baccalaureate contains it too — a bachelor's degree was jokingly linked to laurel berries, which is a pun about eight hundred years old.
Latin
laurus — laurel
Vulgar Latin
*laurārius
Old French
lorier
Anglo-Norman
lorer
Middle English
laurer
English, today
laurel
Middle English laurer, laurel, from Anglo-Norman lorer, from Old French lorier, from Vulgar Latin laurārius, from Latin laurus (“laurel”). a doublet of loureiro.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA