windflower
nounEtymology From wind + flower.
1
Synonym of wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa).
- Herba venti, Anemone. Wind flower, the juyce snuffed up the nose purgeth the head, it cleanseth filthy ulcers, encreaseth milk in nurses, and outwardly by ointment helps Leprosyes.1649, Nicholas Culpeper, A physicall directory, or, A translation of the London dispensatory made by the Colledge of Physicians in London, London: Peter Cole, page 40:
- “When windflowers blossom on the sea And fishes skim along the plain, Then we who part this weary day, Then you and I shall meet again.”1881, Christina Rossetti, “One Foot on the Sea, and One on Shore”, in A Pageant and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, page 95:
3 more examples
- The first windflowers were out, and all the wood seemed pale with the pallor of endless little anemones, sprinkling the shaken floor.1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter VIII, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC, page 101:
- “[…] We spent an hour in a hazel copse, picking primroses and looking at the little white windflowers. One doesn’t pick the windflowers,” he explained, “because in an hour they’re withered. […]”1963, Aldous Huxley, chapter 7, in Island, New York: Bantam, page 101:
- Here is spring were celandine, marsh marigold, wind-flower, primrose, cowslip and dog's violet.1977, K.M. Elizabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 13:
- Derived terms
- snowdrop windflower