[a. Fr. ergot, OF. argot cock’s spur: see ARGOT1.]
1. A diseased transformation of the seed of rye and other grasses, being really the sclerotium or hardened mycelium of a fungus (Claviceps purpurea), in color dark-violet, and in form resembling a cock’s spur; hence the name. Also, the disease consisting in this transformation.
1683. Weekly Mem. Ingen., 151. That Malignity … breeding in the Ears of Corn certain black Grains, call’d in Sologne, Ergots.
1762. Bones, in Phil. Trans., LII. 533. The gentlemen of the academy were of opinion, that the disease … was produced … by bread, in which there was a great quantity of ergot.
1793. T. Beddoes, Calculus, etc. 209. The disease of rye called ergot is exactly analogous to the scurvy in animals.
1838. T. Thomson, Chem. Org. Bodies, 879. We give to the seeds of rye altered by this disease, the name of ergot of rye.
1863. N. Brit. Rev., May, 379. An extraordinary disease, called ergot, occurs on wheat and rye.
b. The diseased seed of rye used medicinally.
1860. Tanner, Pregnancy, v. 266. The ergot of rye will often excite contractions, and cause the uterus to empty itself.
1876. Harley, Mat. Med., 365. Ergot seems to have been first used as a medicine by the profession in France and the United States.
1880. N. Kerr, in Mech. Temp. Jrnl., July, 151. Half a drachm of the ergot was given every fifteen minutes.
¶ c. (See quot.)
1764. Baker, in Phil. Trans., LV. 107. I observed a disease mentioned under the appellation of Ergot, a name borrowed from its supposed cause, viz. vitiated rye.
2. Farriery. ‘A small horny capsule on each side of the claw or horny envelope of the digits in Ruminants and Pachyderms’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.). Cf. ARGOT1.
3. Anat. (See quot.)
1840. G. V. Ellis, Anat., 41. The hippocampus minor or ‘ergot’ is a projection in the floor of the posterior extremity or cornu of the lateral ventricle [of the brain].
Hence Ergoted ppl. a., tainted with ergot.
1841. Jrnl. Royal Agric. Soc., II. I. 16. A poor man … ventured to make bread of some ergotted rye.
1869. E. A. Parkes, Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3), 222. Flour … may be ergoted or grown and fermenting.
