Sea of yellow

Teachers of English, look, the badly named "Rapeseed weed" has another name in English too!! "Field mustard" is very appropriate as mustard is edible.

Christine: The 'rape' in 'rapeseed' is from Latin in which 'rapum' means 'turnip'. Sure, the word has very negative connotations and there are other names, e.g. charlock, and rapeseed is in the mustard/cabbage family, not turnip. But if we are to going rifling through the dictionary for such things, do we have to go through the phone book, call up every family named Raper, and tell them they are badly named and use something else? Remember the lower-level US official who got hauled through the coals and lost his job for using (correctly) the word 'niggardly'? Sometimes we do go too far.

@Rik

Indeed.

And even the “seed” suffix is a concession to the overly-sensitive.

When I was younger, it was called simply “rape”, and nobody gave it a second thought.

@Christina Tsuchida = interesting i didn't know that. I wonder if it is GMO canola/rapeseed then ?

I always thought that way it stinks when it's in full bloom had something to do with the name as it smells like well you know what....

When I was younger, it was called simply “rape”, and nobody gave it a second thought

That's what I've always called it.

Are the vocabulary police going to suggest that British kids stop calling their mothers "Mummy" because of the connotations of bandaged, rotting flesh?

And will they remove faggots from the dinner menu?

Let's call a spade a spade, and rape(seed), rape(seed).