LAVENDER • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Lavender

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/lˈævəndər/ Listen

noun

Lavender n.

(Bot.) An aromatic plant of the genus Lavandula (Lavandula vera), common in the south of Europe. It yields and oil used in medicine and perfumery. The Spike lavender (Lavandula Spica) yields a coarser oil (oil of spike), used in the arts.

The pale, purplish color of lavender flowers, paler and more delicate than lilac.

Lavender cotton (Bot.), a low, twiggy, aromatic shrub (Santolina Chamaecyparissus) of the Mediterranean region, formerly used as a vermifuge, etc., and still used to keep moths from wardrobes. Also called ground cypress.

Lavender water, a perfume, toilet water, or shaving lotion containing the essential oil of lavender, and sometimes the essential oil of bergamot, and essence of ambergris.

Sea lavender. (Bot.) See Marsh rosemary.

To lay in lavender.

(a)

To lay away, as clothing, with sprigs of lavender.

(b)

To pawn. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Lavender'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lavender" Quotes from Famous Books

... wild laurel and dense clumps of lavender encroach upon the paths, alternating with great bushes of coronilla, which bar the flight of the butterfly with their yellow-winged flowers, and whose searching fragrance embalms all the air ...

— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... PHILLIPS is said to have written the greater portion of his famous lecture on "The Lost Arts" on the backs of old envelopes while waiting for a train in the Boston depot. Mr. GEORGE W. CURTIS prepares his mind for writing by sleeping with his head encased in a nightcap lined with leaves of lavender and rose. GRANT, it is said, accomplishes most of his writing while under the influence of either opium or chloroform, which will account for the soothing character of his state papers. WALT WHITMAN writes most of his poetry in the dissecting-room of the Medical College, where ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various

... yet there was something that was not there. With some misgivings he packed his bag and took the train, calling up again to his mind the picture of Rantoul, with his shabby trousers pulled up, decorating his ankles with lavender and black, roaring all the while ...

— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... had just put the finishing touch on the sideboard, having rubbed the massive old silver and scrubbed the beautiful Wedgwood pitchers so that the former shone with some of its pristine glory and the latter's little fat cupids and heavy garlands of roses stood out from their lavender background as they had not done for a year or more. She had taken down the dusty lace curtains and washed the dingy windows. The room was no longer dark and gloomy. The sun did not have to find its way through grime ...

— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... flights than just to skirt round Clay Hill, with a peep at the fine back woods, by strained tendons, got by skipping a skipping-rope at 53—heu mihi non sum qualis. But do you know, now you come to talk of walks, a ramble of four hours or so—there and back—to the willow and lavender plantations at the south corner of Northaw Church by a well dedicated to Saint Claridge, with the clumps of finest moss rising hillock fashion, which I counted to the number of two hundred and sixty, and are called ...

— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

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