dandelion: [13] Dandelion means literally ‘lion’s tooth’. It was borrowed from French dent-de-lion, which itself was a translation of medieval Latin dēns leōnis. It was presumably so called from the toothlike points of its leaves (although some have speculated that the name comes from the long taproot). The plant has a variety of local dialectal names, many of them (clock, farmer’s clocks, schoolboy’s clock, telltime, time flower) reflecting the traditional practice of telling the time by blowing off all the plant’s tufted seeds (the number of puffs needed indicates the hour). Piss-a-bed, like its French counterpart pissenlit, betrays the plant’s diuretic properties. => dentist, lion
