Suddenly I see mushrooms in the backyard. At least 4 different kinds, plus a panoply of tree fungi.

Suddenly I see what a weird word mushroom is. Mush + room. Why? Mush I can see, but room? I’ll have to look that up.

From Wikipedia, the source of instant knowledge:

From Middle English musheron, musseron, from Anglo-Norman, from Old French mousseron, of Germanic origin: Old French mousse (“moss”) (—first applied to a type of fungus which grows in moss), from Low Frankish*mosa (“moss”) or Old Dutch mosa (“moss”), akin to Old High German mos (“moss, bog”), Old High German mios (“moss, mire”), Old English mēos (“moss”), Old English mōs (“bog, marsh”), Old Norse mosi (“moss”), Old Norse

 myrr (“bog, mire”), from Proto-Germanic *musą, *musô, *miuziz (“mosses, bog”), from Proto-Indo-European *meus- (“mosses, mold, mildew”). Displaced native Old English swamm (“mushroom”). More at mire. Alternatively, the Old French may be of pre-Roman origin.

Alternatively, it could be pre-Roman. After all that.

I like swamm better. Our yard is full of swamm. Swimming in swamm. Swammed. Turns out verbing has been around since the 1500s. And there I was, turning my nose up at it.

They come up whenever it rains. What else might rise up from the rain?