The Etymology of Chartreuse
Chartreuse is a triple-layered word. The Grande Chartreuse is the head monastery of the Carthusian Order, founded by Saint Bruno in 1084 in the Chartreuse Mountains of the French Alps. The order took its Latin name Cartusia from the place; English Carthusian and the colour-and-drink word chartreuse both descend from this. In 1605 a marshal of France gave the monks an "Elixir of Long Life" — a manuscript recipe for a herbal distillation involving 130 plants, the formula of which has been kept secret since. The monks refined the recipe and from 1764 produced the green and yellow liqueurs that bear the monastery’s name. By the late nineteenth century the distinctive yellow-green of green Chartreuse had given English a colour-name: chartreuse, recorded from 1884 for the pale, slightly chemical green that lies between yellow and grass. Few colours can claim a Carthusian origin, an Alpine monastery, and a marshal’s manuscript in their etymology.