gorse: [OE] Gorse appears to mean etymologically ‘prickly bush’. It has been traced back to an Indo-European source *ghrzddenoting ‘roughness’ or ‘prickliness’, which also produced German gerste ‘barley’. Of the plant’s other names, furze [OE] is of unknown origin, while whin [11] was probably borrowed from a Scandinavian language. [gorse etymology, gorse origin, 英语词源]