Also 6 incarnacyon, coron-, cornation. [Some 16th-c. authors give one form of the name as coronation, apparently from its 16th-c. specific name, Betonica coronaria, in allusion to its use in chaplets (cf. CAMPION), or from ‘the floures … dented or toothed aboue … like to a littell crownet’ (Lyte). On the other hand, Turner calls the plant an incarnacyon, Lyte has carnation as well as coronation, and Gerarde expressly identifies it with the color ‘carnation.’ Prior takes coronation as the original form, and Britten and Holland think his opinion ‘probably correct.’
One or other name must have been due to popular mistake; carnation is alone found after 1600, and has apparently even modified the later application of ‘carnation’ as a color-name: the flower, however, is not always of this color: as Lyte says, ‘some be of colour white, some carnation or of a liuely flesshe colour, some be of a cleare or bright redde, some of a darke or deepe redde, and some speckled.’]
The general name for the cultivated varieties of the Clove-pink (Dianthus caryophyllus).
1538. Turner, Libellus, Aiij. Betonica altilis siue coronaria, que a quibusdam uocatur cariophillatum, est herba quam uernacula lingua uocamus a Gelofer, aut a Clowgelofer aut an Incarnacyon.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, II. vii. 156. In English garden Gillofers, Cloaue gillofers, and the greatest and brauest sorte of them are called Coronations or Cornations. Ibid., 154. Vetonica altilis, Carnations, and the double cloaue Gillofers.
1579. Spenser, Sheph. Cal., April, 138. Bring Coronations, and Sops in wine, Worne of Paramoures.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, II. clxxii. 473. The great Carnation Gilloflower … flowers of an excellent sweete smell, and pleasant Carnation colour, whereof it tooke his name.
1611. Shaks., Wint. T., IV. iv. 82. Carnations, and streak’d Gilly-vors.
1779. Sheridan, Critic, II. ii. The striped Carnation, and the guarded rose.
1814. Wordsw., Excurs., I. 757. Carnations, once Prized for surpassing beauty.
1861. Miss Pratt, Flower. Pl., I. 207. Clove-Pink, Carnation, or Clove-Gilly-flower.
attrib. 1631. Milton, Epit. Mch’ness Winchester, 37. The pride of her carnation train.
1796. H. Hunter, trans. St.-Pierre’s Stud. Nat. (1799), III. 107. Basilicons, with a carnation smell, exhaled the sweetest of perfumes.
