Immortelle
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any of various papery flowers, often dried and used as decoration.
"[…] a big rabbit-warren of a house full of […] fragments of the day's market, garlic, stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on strings for screens, old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah puppies, plaster images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns."
- 2 mostly widely cultivated species of everlasting flowers having usually purple flowers; southern Europe to Iran; naturalized elsewhere wordnet
- 3 Any of various trees of the genus Erythrina.
"The land between the road and the gully widened; the gully grew shallower. Beyond it Mr Biswas saw the tall immortelles and their red and yellow flowers. And then the untrodden road blazed with the flowers."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"[…] a big rabbit-warren of a house full of […] fragments of the day's market, garlic, stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on strings for screens, old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah puppies, plaster images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns."
Etymology
Borrowed from French immortelle.