Meaning

noun very spiny and dense evergreen shrub with fragrant golden-yellow flowers; common throughout western Europe

noun small Eurasian shrub having clusters of yellow flowers that yield a dye; common as a weed in Britain and the United States; sometimes grown as an ornamental

noun any of various hard colored rocks (especially rocks consisting of chert or basalt)

originFrom Middle English whynne, from Old Norse hvein (“gorse, furze”) (compare Norwegian kvein (“bent grass”), Swedish ven (“bent grass”), dialectal hven (“swamp”)), apparently from hvein (“swampy land”), from Proto-Germanic *hwainō, *hwin- (“swamp; moor”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱʷeyn- (“to soil; mud; filth”). Compare Latin caenum (“filth”), Latin inquīnō (“to sully; soil”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0