Woad-waxen

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The leguminous plant Genista tinctoria, native to Europe.

    "The woad waxen (Genista tinctoria), common enough near Salem, is seldom found inland, and the same holds good for the barberry and privet, which grow so abundantly near the coast and which have probably been introduced for two hundred years."

Example

More examples

"The woad waxen (Genista tinctoria), common enough near Salem, is seldom found inland, and the same holds good for the barberry and privet, which grow so abundantly near the coast and which have probably been introduced for two hundred years."

Etymology

From Old English wuduweaxe.

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