A listener named Ross reports that he has observed the use of the word verdant as a sort of formal synonym to “green” or “environmentally responsible.”

I have to say that he must be more observant than I am because I haven’t noticed the trend.

Furthermore when I went looking for it the closest I could come were a bunch environmental companies using the word as part of their name or marketing material.

But I might be wrong.

I remember when—late in the game—the light went on for me that the word green was supposed to mean “environmental.”

To me the word verdant brings images of lush vegetation. I’m not sure if it might be this natural feel of a healthy ecosystem that makes the word appropriate for environmental application or simply that the Latin root of the word literally means “green.”

While the word verdant came to English directly from Latin in the late 1500s, French also got the root from Latin so that the French word for “green” is vert.

This is why the State of Vermont is so named; Vermont literally means “green mountains.”

For its entire existence in English verdant has meant the green of plants.

About the time that verdant appeared in English 500 years ago the word green was acquiring a meaning of “inexperience.”  The idea that fresh foliage as an analogy to lack of sophistication was applied by the early 1800s to the word verdant as well and then in 1853 an author named Edward Bradley, writing under the pen name Cuthbert Bede used both words to name the chief character in his book The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, An Oxford Freshman.

Evidently these and other similar stories by Bradley were very popular in Victorian England and I’ve found one site that calls them minor classics, and another website that abridges the stories down to half hour versions for the internet age.

While some report these tales to be instructive reflections of university life a century and a half ago, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography tells us that old Edward Bradley never spent more than a couple of days at Oxford and so is thought to have been making it up based on his experiences at University College, Durham.

His pen name Cuthbert Bede is taken from the names of two saints associated with Durham.

The Bede saint is someone we’ve definitely come across before at podictionary.  He is also known as The Venerable Bede and is widely seen as being the first person to try to write down the History of England up to his time—which was about 1300 years ago.

One thing that is appealing about the Verdant Green stories is Edward Bradley’s use of slang.

We learn that people referred to eyeglasses as gig-lamps because a horse drawn gig might be equipped with lamps like a car has headlights. These goggly appendages were likened to glasses.

One slang word that survives is the drink shandy—a mix of beer and ginger ale—identified by Bradley as a shandygaff.