When the Nobel Prizes are handed out each year, honorees each receive a medal and monetary prize. Even in the absence of these material goods, the honor of being a Nobel laureate persists as part of someone's name or title, like a heroic epithet to recognize a life's achievement. I annually join my colleagues in the arts and sciences praising the winners and everything they have accomplished. As a scholar of classical studies, I also mull over the journey of that strange word, laureate, and how aptly it names those who receive it. The English word 'laureate' dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries, when it jumped almost straight out of the Latin 'laureatus,' an adjective to describe someone crowned with a wreath of laurel leaves. But laurel's history as a symbolically important plant goes back thousands of years. The laurel plant is one of a number of small bushes and trees found originally in the Mediterranean. Some varieties grow dozens of feet tall, often marked by smooth,...
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