HUMBLE PLANT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Humble plant

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/hˈəmbəl plænt/ Listen

adjective

Humble adj. (compar. humbler; superl. humblest)

1.

Near the ground; not high or lofty. "Thy humble nest built on the ground."

2.

Not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming; modest; as, a humble cottage. Used to describe objects.

3.

Thinking lowly of one's self; claiming little for one's self; not proud, arrogant, or assuming; thinking one's self ill-deserving or unworthy, when judged by the demands of God; lowly; weak; modest. Used to describe people. "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." "She should be humble who would please." "Without a humble imitation of the divine Author of our... religion we can never hope to be a happy nation."

Humble plant (Bot.), a species of sensitive plant, of the genus Mimosa (Mimosa sensitiva).

To eat humble pie, to endure mortification; to submit or apologize abjectly; to yield passively to insult or humiliation; a phrase derived from a pie made of the entrails or humbles of a deer, which was formerly served to servants and retainers at a hunting feast. See Humbles.

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Etymology of 'Humble plant'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Humble plant" Quotes from Famous Books

... oaks, and made shadowy clumps and formless masses of other bushes, it was quite romantic to sit by the window and inhale the faint, sad odor of the fennel in the walks below. Perhaps this economical pleasure was much enhanced by a picture in my memory, whose faded colors the odor of this humble plant never failed to restore. So I often sat there of evenings and closed my eyes until the forms and benches of a country schoolroom came back to me, redolent with the incense of fennel covertly stowed away in my desk, and gazed again in silent rapture on the round, red cheeks and long black ...

— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... boundary which separates them. The first was the lovely sight of the hawthorn in full bloom. I had always thought of the hawthorn as a pretty shrub, growing in hedges; as big as a currant bush or a barberry bush, or some humble plant of that character. I was surprised to see it as a tree, standing by itself, and making the most delicious roof a pair of young lovers could imagine to sit under. It looked at a little distance like a young apple-tree covered with new-fallen snow. I shall never ...

— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... several other Trees: of the Stales of Burdocks, Teasels, Daisies, Carret, Fennel, Ferne, Reeds, &c. of the frothy texture of the Pith of a Feather: some Conjectures about the probability of values in these Pores. Argued also from the Phaenomena of sensible and humble Plant: some ...

— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert. Such in the soul of man is faith. The blossoms of passion, Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, But they beguile us, and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. Only this humble plant can guide us here, and hereafter Crown us with asphodel flowers, that are wet ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... gathered or eaten after that day. On the other hand, in Scotland the peasants say that the devil throws his cloak over the blackberries and makes them unwholesome after that day, while in Ireland he is said to stamp on the berries. Even that humble plant, the cabbage, has been invested with some mystery. It was said that the fairies were fond of its leaves, and rode to their midnight dances on cabbage-stalks. The German women used to say that 'Babies come out of the cabbage-heads.' The Irish peasant ties a cabbage-leaf around ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

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