Butterwort

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any plant of the insectivorous genus Pinguicula.

    "As he climbed up through the golden gorse he would look for orchids amongst the commoner cotton grass, bog asphodel and butterwort[.]"

  2. 2
    any of numerous carnivorous bog plants of the genus Pinguicula having showy purple or yellow or white flowers and a rosette of basal leaves coated with a sticky secretion to trap small insects wordnet
  3. 3
    common butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris)

Example

More examples

"As he climbed up through the golden gorse he would look for orchids amongst the commoner cotton grass, bog asphodel and butterwort[.]"

Etymology

From butter + wort: perhaps from the ability of the leaves to coagulate milk, or from their peculiar sliminess.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.