[ gdw]
Etymologically both primerole and primevere are terms for plants flowering early in spring. They have been used, somewhat interchangeably (for confusion of primerole, primerose and primevoire, see TL 7.1856-58), with reference to both ‘primrose’ and ‘cowslip’. The English lexeme primrose, which is perhaps a later alteration of primerole (cf. OED primrose n. and a.), is also found in Continental French, but, despite being listed as a spelling variant of primerole in AND1, no Anglo-Norman attestation has been located.