pollen: [16] Pollen originally meant ‘flour’ in English. Not until the 18th century was it taken up as a botanical term. It was borrowed from Latin pollen ‘powder, dust, flour’, a relative of pulvis ‘dust’ (source of English powder and pulverize) and polenta ‘pearl barley’ (source of English polenta [16]). => polenta, powder, pulverize[pollen etymology, pollen origin, 英语词源]