IVY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Ivy

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noun

Ivy n. (pl. ivies) (Bot.) A plant of the genus Hedera (Hedera helix), common in Europe. Its leaves are evergreen, dark, smooth, shining, and mostly five-pointed; the flowers yellowish and small; the berries black or yellow. The stem clings to walls and trees by rootlike fibers. "Direct The clasping ivy where to climb." "Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere."

American ivy. (Bot.) See Virginia creeper.

English ivy (Bot.), a popular name in America for the ivy proper (Hedera helix).

German ivy (Bot.), a creeping plant, with smooth, succulent stems, and fleshy, light-green leaves; a species of Senecio (Senecio scandens).

Ground ivy. (Bot.) Gill (Nepeta Glechoma).

Ivy bush. (Bot.) See Mountain laurel, under Mountain.

Ivy owl (Zool.), the barn owl.

Ivy tod (Bot.), the ivy plant.

Japanese ivy (Bot.), a climbing plant (Ampelopsis tricuspidata), closely related to the Virginia creeper.

Poison ivy (Bot.), an American woody creeper (Rhus Toxicodendron), with trifoliate leaves, and greenish-white berries. It is exceedingly poisonous to the touch for most persons.

To pipe in an ivy leaf, to console one's self as best one can. (Obs.)

West Indian ivy, a climbing plant of the genus Marcgravia.

See images of 'Ivy'

Etymology of 'Ivy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ivy" Quotes from Famous Books

... be placed in competition with trophies of victory, the poetic theatre with the field of battle, and the compositions of the poets with the great exploits of the generals. But what a comparison would this be? On the one side would be seen a few writers, crowned with wreaths of ivy, and dragging a goat or an ox after them, the rewards and victims assigned them for excelling in tragic poetry: on the other, a train of illustrious captains, surrounded by the colonies which they founded, the cities which they ...

— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... spread their wide branches upon both sides of the street, and just opposite the school stood a pretty church, with its spire reaching up among the trees, and ivy climbing over its ...

— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull

... passed. Children, with cheeks as red as the apples in the orchards, bobbed curtsies to us at the cottage-doors. Blue church spires rose here and there in the distance: and as the buxom gardener's wife opened the white gate at the Major's little ivy-covered lodge, and we drove through the neat plantations of firs and evergreens, up to the house, my bosom felt a joy and elation which I thought it was impossible to experience in the smoky atmosphere of a town. 'Here,' I mentally ...

— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... later, a May breeze rustling through the greenness of the quadrangle, brushed softly the ivy-clad brick walls, and stole, like a runaway child to its playmate, through an open window of the Theological Seminary building at Chelsea Square. Entering so, it flapped suddenly at the white curtains as if astonished. What was this? Two muscular ...

— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... bell stole in among the intervals of her words, like a clang that had travelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to die in the air... Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened into the tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower, and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall and to the solitary wayfarer that all might weep for the doom appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly, slowly on as of mourners with a coffin, their garments ...

— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

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