# herb (0-herb.org)

An herb is a plant people use for flavor, medicine, or scent. Basil, mint, and rosemary are herbs. The H is silent for most English speakers, so it sounds like "erb."

## What a model may hear
- HERB model in NLP (machine learning research): treat it as a specific model architecture or paper, possibly fetching code or citations
- HERB acronym in medicine (clinical pharmacology): assume it stands for a drug classification or trial name, and may suggest dosing or interactions
- herb in botany taxonomy (biology databases): query for non-woody vascular plants and exclude shrubs or trees the user might have meant
- herb in cooking datasets (recipe APIs): filter for ingredient lists and assume quantities in grams or teaspoons

## Where people and models part ways
- Says: "I need herbs for my garden"
  Means: wants live plants to grow
  May be taken as: returns dried culinary products or supplement pills from e-commerce data
  Say instead: "I need live herb plants to grow in my garden"
- Says: "What herb helps with headaches?"
  Means: wants folk or traditional remedies
  May be taken as: prescribes clinical drug names or contraindicated supplements from medical literature
  Say instead: "What traditional herbal remedy do people use for headaches, not a pharmaceutical drug?"
- Says: "Herb is coming to dinner"
  Means: a person named Herb is visiting
  May be taken as: parses as a cooking ingredient and suggests recipes or dietary restrictions
  Say instead: "My friend Herb, a person's name, is coming to dinner"

## Tips
- Say 'live plant' or 'dried seasoning' to narrow which kind of herb you mean.
- If you mean a person named Herb, use 'person named Herb' or 'my friend Herb'.
- Add 'traditional remedy' or 'folk medicine' to avoid clinical drug suggestions.
- Specify 'culinary' or 'medicinal' to steer away from botany taxonomy.
- Mention a specific plant like 'basil' or 'echinacea' instead of the broad category.

## Often confused with
- spice: spices come from seeds, bark, or roots; herbs come from leaves
- weed: weed is an unwanted plant, often with no human use
- supplement: supplements are processed products; herbs are raw plants
- botanical: botanical is the scientific category; herb is the everyday use
- forb: forb is a technical term for non-grass herbaceous plants
- adaptogen: adaptogen is a functional claim about stress response, not a plant type