GoldEN CHRYSALIDES

Most people use chrysalises as the plural of chrysalis, but apparently the more etymologically correct version is chrysalides (although you're free to use whatever you want). The word was borrowed in 1658 from Latin, and the Latin word came from Ancient Greek khrysallis. The root of that is khrysos, meaning "gold" or "wealth"; the connection was that the pupae of many butterflies in the region were gold-colored. This is probably from a Semitic source, because of cognates in languages like Hebrew. Khyrsos also gave us the word chrysanthemum - anthemon​ meant "flower" in Ancient Greek (and comes from Proto-Indo-European hendos, meaning "bloom"). Literary frequency of both words has been about the same; fairly constant since the mid-twentieth century.