The clove is named for its shape. Look closely at a dried clove and you will see a small, dark-brown object with a rounded head and a tapering body that looks remarkably like an old-fashioned hand-forged nail. The resemblance was obvious enough that speakers of multiple European languages, independently or by influence, settled on the same name: nail. English clove comes from Old French clou, meaning nail, from Latin clavus. French calls them clous de girofle (nails of the clove tree). Spanish calls them clavos (nails). Italian uses chiodi di garofano (nails of carnation). German Nelke derives from Nägelein, meaning little nail. The descriptive power of the nail metaphor is so strong that it has converged across languages.
The Latin clavus (nail) is the source of several other English words. A clavichord is a keyboard instrument whose strings are struck by small metal wedges, literally key-nails. Conclave, literally a room locked with a key (from con- plus clavis, key, related to clavus), describes the locked meeting in which cardinals elect a new pope. The relationship between clavus (nail) and clavis (key) in Latin is debated, but the two words may share a root, since early keys
The fuller Old French name for the spice was clou de girofle, nail of the girofle tree. The girofle element comes from Latin caryophyllum, borrowed from Greek karyophyllon, which may mean nut-leaf (karyon, nut, plus phyllon, leaf). English borrowed both halves of the French name separately: clove from clou, and gillyflower (an old name for the carnation and similar fragrant flowers) from girofle. The carnation was called a gillyflower because its scent resembles that of cloves.
Cloves are the dried flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, a tree native to the Maluku Islands (Moluccas) of eastern Indonesia. Like nutmeg, which grows in the same region, cloves were a commodity of extraordinary value in the ancient and medieval world. Chinese records from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) describe courtiers chewing cloves to freshen their breath before audiences with the emperor. Arab traders brought cloves to the Mediterranean long before Europeans knew where they came from.
The spice trade in cloves, as in nutmeg, drove European colonial expansion in Southeast Asia. The Portuguese reached the Moluccas in 1512 and attempted to monopolize the clove trade. The Dutch supplanted them in the seventeenth century and maintained a ruthless monopoly, destroying clove trees on islands outside their control and punishing unauthorized cultivation with severe penalties. The French eventually broke the monopoly by smuggling clove seedlings to their Indian Ocean colonies, particularly Zanzibar, which became and remains a major clove producer.
The English word clove also refers to a segment of a bulb of garlic (a clove of garlic), but this is a completely different word with a completely different origin. Garlic clove comes from Old English clufu, related to cleave, meaning to split or divide. A clove of garlic is a piece that has been split or divided from the bulb. The coincidence of spelling has led many people to assume the two cloves are related, but they are not. The nail-spice and the split-garlic are etymological strangers sharing an address.
Clove oil, extracted from the spice, has been used in dentistry for centuries as a natural analgesic. The active compound, eugenol, has genuine pain-relieving and antiseptic properties, making clove oil one of the few traditional remedies whose effectiveness is confirmed by modern pharmacology. The practice of applying clove oil to a toothache is documented in both European and Asian medical traditions stretching back hundreds of years.
In modern cuisine, cloves appear in both sweet and savory contexts across virtually every culinary tradition. They are a component of Chinese five-spice powder, Indian garam masala, and the French quatre-épices. Studded into hams, simmered in mulled wine, and ground into gingerbread, the little nail from the Spice Islands has driven more human history than most people realize when they encounter it in a pumpkin pie.