means A golden-yellow spice ground from the root of a tropical plant, used to color and flavor food, especially in South Asian cooking.

from From the Old French 'terre mérite,' literally 'deserving earth' or 'meritorious earth' — likely a learned reshaping of the Medieval Latin 'terra merita.' The name probably refers to the spice's appearance as a yellow earthy powder, though the path from Latin to the modern word is tangled, and some suspect the Latin itself was an attempt to make sense of an older, possibly Eastern, word that's now lost to us.