Florilegium
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A collection of flowers.
"Rich owners of private gardens commissioned large-format florilegiums to immortalize their personal taste and power of acquisition, and the drawn pages burned with the urgency and excitement of explaining every plant’s form, color, and beauty."
- 2 an anthology of short literary pieces and poems and ballads etc. wordnet
- 3 An anthology, particularly of excerpts from larger works.
- 4 A patristic anthology.
Example
More examples"Rich owners of private gardens commissioned large-format florilegiums to immortalize their personal taste and power of acquisition, and the drawn pages burned with the urgency and excitement of explaining every plant’s form, color, and beauty."
Etymology
Borrowed from Renaissance Latin flōrilēgium, calque of Ancient Greek ἀνθολογία (anthología, “flower-gathering”) (compare English anthology), so called because flowers were used as symbols of the finer sensibility of literature.
Related phrases
More for "florilegium"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.