Nectar, the mythological drink of the Greek gods, may contain within its etymology the secret of immortality. The word's most widely accepted derivation breaks it into two Proto-Indo-European components: *neḱ- (death) and *-tar or *-tr̥ (overcoming, carrying beyond). If this analysis is correct, nectar literally means 'death-defeater' or 'that which overcomes death' — a fitting name for the beverage that conferred immortality upon the Olympian gods.
In Greek mythology, nectar and ambrosia were the twin sustaining substances of the gods. The precise distinction between them varied by source — Homer generally treats nectar as the drink and ambrosia as the food, but other authors reverse the assignment or blur the distinction. What remained constant was their function: they conferred immortality, and they were forbidden to mortals.
The PIE root *neḱ- (death) produced a substantial vocabulary of mortality in Greek and Latin. Greek nekros (dead body) gave English necropolis (city of the dead), necrosis (tissue death), necromancy (divination from the dead), and necrology (a list of deaths). Latin nex (death, killing) and nocēre (to harm) connect more distantly. If nectar does derive from this root, it represents a remarkable semantic inversion — from death to its opposite.
The botanical application of nectar — the sweet liquid secreted by flowers to attract pollinating insects — was first used by Linnaeus in the 18th century. The metaphor was explicit: the sweet substance offered by flowers is their divine gift, their ambrosia. Nectar is produced by specialized glands called nectaries, and its sugar concentration, composition, and quantity are precisely calibrated to attract specific pollinators.
The relationship between nectar and honey is direct: bees collect floral nectar, transport it to the hive, and process it — reducing water content and adding enzymes — to produce honey. A single colony of honeybees may visit millions of flowers and process hundreds of pounds of nectar to produce the honey stores that sustain the hive through winter.
In common English, nectar has become a metaphor for any supremely delicious drink. Nectarine — the smooth-skinned peach — takes its name from the same root, its sweet flesh compared to the drink of the gods.