conc▪ Etymology obscure. According to Rolland2014a perhaps from mPers ḫār-šōb ‘stick with thorns’ (in which the element ḫār goes back to IE *kar‑ / *ker‑ ‘hard’, and šōb is from oPers čop ‘stick’).
▪ The Ar word is the etymon of Eur words for ‘artichoke’. The Arabs probably used the plant in medicine, thanks to the bitter chemical constituent cynarine contained in it (Osman2002). Artichokes were known in Italy by the 1450s, brought to Florence from Naples in 1466.