The Etymology of Clove
English clove is two unrelated words that converged into the same spelling. The spice clove came in around 1300 from the Old French phrase clou de girofle — literally nail of clove, because the dried flower bud of Syzygium aromaticum looks like a small black-iron nail with a four-pointed head. Clou descends from Latin clavus, meaning nail. English speakers eventually shortened clou de girofle to just clove, dropping the modifier and keeping the metaphor. The other clove — a clove of garlic, a single segment of the bulb — is much older and entirely native: Old English clufu, a noun built on the same Proto-Indo-European root *kleu- (to split) that gives English cleave. A clove of garlic is, etymologically, a thing-that-has-cleft-off. So a recipe asking for a clove of garlic and a clove of spice is unwittingly using two languages: a splitter from Old English and a nail from Late Latin.