Margaritaceous! Of margaritas? Full of margaritas? Lime-tasting? Salty?

None of the above. Margaritaceous is a word, but it has nothing to do with margaritas. However, the person who picks the word of the day at Dictionary.com has a sense of humor and chose that word for today.

So the real definition: resembling mother-of-pearl. Margarit, the term’s root, is an Old English word. Margarite was also used by those crazy Old English people to describe a light colored daisy-like flower, the margarite.

My curiosity grew; how can a  tequila drink,  a color resembling mother-of-pearl, and daisy’s be linguistically related via old English? Turns out to be an interesting question. History has several versions of the same story, in which the drink was named after a woman named Margarita, in the early 1900s. And yes, Margarita stems from the same margarit of Old English. A woman named Mmargarita would be fair-skinned like mother-of-pearl.

The link between Cinco de Mayo (1862) and margaritas (invented 1900s), however, is a modern tradition. So, Happy Cinco de Mayo and cheers!