WEEPING WILLOW • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Weeping willow

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/wˈipɪŋ wˈɪlˌoʊ/ Listen

noun

Weeping willow n. (Bot.) A tree (Salix babylonica) of the willow family with slender leaves, native to China, whose branches grow very long and slender, and hang down almost perpendicularly. It grows best where soil is moist, as by the banks of streams and is widely cultivated as an ornamental tree.

Synonyms: Babylonian weeping willow.

Willow n.

1.

(Bot.) Any tree or shrub of the genus Salix, including many species, most of which are characterized often used as an emblem of sorrow, desolation, or desertion. "A wreath of willow to show my forsaken plight." Hence, a lover forsaken by, or having lost, the person beloved, is said to wear the willow. "And I must wear the willow garland For him that's dead or false to me."

2.

(Textile Manuf.) A machine in which cotton or wool is opened and cleansed by the action of long spikes projecting from a drum which revolves within a box studded with similar spikes; probably so called from having been originally a cylindrical cage made of willow rods, though some derive the term from winnow, as denoting the winnowing, or cleansing, action of the machine. Called also willy, twilly, twilly devil, and devil.

Almond willow, Pussy willow, Weeping willow. (Bot.) See under Almond, Pussy, and Weeping.

Willow biter (Zool.) the blue tit. (Prov. Eng.)

Willow fly (Zool.), a greenish European stone fly (Chloroperla viridis); called also yellow Sally.

Willow gall (Zool.), a conical, scaly gall produced on willows by the larva of a small dipterous fly (Cecidomyia strobiloides).

Willow grouse (Zool.), the white ptarmigan. See ptarmigan.

Willow lark (Zool.), the sedge warbler. (Prov. Eng.)

Willow ptarmigan (Zool.)

(a)

The European reed bunting, or black-headed bunting. See under Reed.

(b)

A sparrow (Passer salicicolus) native of Asia, Africa, and Southern Europe.

Willow tea, the prepared leaves of a species of willow largely grown in the neighborhood of Shanghai, extensively used by the poorer classes of Chinese as a substitute for tea.

Willow thrush (Zool.), a variety of the veery, or Wilson's thrush. See Veery.

Willow warbler (Zool.), a very small European warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus); called also bee bird, haybird, golden wren, pettychaps, sweet William, Tom Thumb, and willow wren.

See images of 'Weeping willow'

Etymology of 'Weeping willow'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Weeping willow" Quotes from Famous Books

... were other untold reasons, hid in the core of his own heart, faced only when he was alone, and faced again, that night, after he had left his mother and was in his own room and looking out at the moonlight and the big weeping willow that drooped over the one white tomb under which the two brothers, who had been enemies in the battle, slept side by side thus in peace. So far he had followed in their footsteps, since the one part that he was fitted to play was the role they and ...

— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... favoured us with one of his word-pictures: "There was the sapling bending like a weeping willow," he said, "and there was the stag underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he could do anything for me, taking a poke at me boot now and then, just to show nothing would be no bother, and there was me, hanging on to the sapling, and leaning lovingly over ...

— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... declined and was unseen; her hair Fell in long tresses like the weeping willow, Sweeping the marble underneath her chair, Or rather sofa (for it was all pillow, A low, soft ottoman), and black Despair Stirred up and down her bosom like a billow, Which rushes to some shore whose shingles check Its farther course, but ...

— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... mollify its consequences to him, pooh-poohed it, taken it philosophically, taken it smilingly, but he had been all the time unable to get his eyes off it, even though he had finally carried it down to the river's edge and hung it upon the bough of the weeping willow tree. His eyes were still upon it, he was still regarding it at long range, through the shack door, getting the foreshorten of it, getting the middle distance, getting the perspective, utterly unable to stop his ceaseless staring into the emptiness of it, stop wondering ...

— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... had a family of four children afterwards; and one of these is now a member of the Legislature of Ontario. I shall not say whether he is a Grit or a Tory, for that would be getting upon too dangerous ground. Nancy died a few years ago and she sleeps now under the shade of a weeping willow. ...

— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

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