Jasmine

How to spell jasmine

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce jasmine

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jasmine mean?

1. nounA climbing shrub bearing fragrant white or yellow flowers, often used in perfume and tea.

Jasmine in a sentence

• The garden wall was covered in white jasmine by midsummer.

• She brewed a pot of green tea scented with jasmine.

Where does jasmine come from?

Language of origin: Other

Jasmine traces back to the Persian word yasamin, the name of the sweet-smelling climbing shrub that has been cultivated across the Middle East for centuries. The name passed into Arabic as yasmin, and from there it travelled westward into medieval Latin and then into French as jasmin. English borrowed the word in the sixteenth century, settling on the spelling 'jasmine' with a final 'e' that reflects the French route into the language. Because the root was a foreign name rather than a Latin or Greek descriptive term, its spelling stayed fairly faithful to the original sound, which is why the unstressed second syllable (the soft 'mine' that sounds like 'min') is the part writers tend to second-guess. The same Persian root also survives in the personal name Yasmin or Yasmine, a reminder that the flower's name and the given name share one origin.

How the word is built

• jasmin (from Persian yasamin, the flowering shrub)
• -e (English noun spelling)