Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various tropical American, mostly epiphytic orchids of the genus Cattleya, much hybridized and extensively cultivated for their showy, variously colored flowers.
Wiktionary
Etymologies
- Named after William Cattley, English botanist. (Wiktionary)
- New Latin Cattleya, genus name, after William Cattley (died 1832), British patron of botany. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“At the May state dinner for Mexican President Felipe Calderón, prickly pear cactus showed up in vermeil wine coolers, and Dowling also tucked a few among the centerpieces of fuchsia roses and cattleya orchids.”
The Washington Post: The White House's new florist in chief is boldly creating blooms with a view
“This cattleya ‘Scheherazade’ blooms at this time each year.”
“It's a cattleya-type orchid, and it's the first time I've ever been able to get a catt to bloom.”
“It's a member of the cattleya family, and its flowers stay around for a good month, and get darker and darker orange over time.”
“In trying to delete the spacing in the edit, I deleted the cattleya picture and am giving up on trying to fix this particular post.”
“This is an enormous yellow cattleya that is truly enormous.”
“Another hands-free option is to wear flowers in your hair: a halo of stephanotis or a splash of gardenias or cattleya orchids on your best side.”
“Besides that moment (that first evening on which they had “done a cattleya”) when she had told him that she was coming from the”
“The blooms of freesia, narcissus, hyacinths, cattleya orchids, and miniature gardenias are often short-lived, but their sweet fragrance makes up for their early demise.”
“Besides that moment (that first evening on which they had "done a cattleya") when she had told him that she was coming from the Maison Dorée, how many others must there have been, each of them covering a falsehood of which Swann had had no suspicion.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cattleya’.
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Flora
fenugreek, verbena, saxifrage, arbutus, calendula, nasturtium, lobelia, hellebore, rhododendron, philodendron, bellflower, heuchera and 449 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1406 more...
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Proustian
vetiver, cheval-glass, ossature, transvertebration, orris-root, ferruginous, viaticum, rep, senescence, bengal light, madeleine, lime-blossom and 109 more...
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nybubble's Words
cattleya, illuminication, indentifation, revolve, compton, flickerlicious, reanneism, evolutionist, bubble gum, melancholy, rizalist
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orchid addjectives and dayscriptors
a compilation of descriptive names for orchids. few forms of life have so many guises
puttyroot, helmetflower, cattleya, twayblade, vanda, ram's-head, tangle orchid, fairy-slipper, moccasin flower, greenhood, cullion, lady's tresses and 43 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cattleya.
knitandpurl "But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which had begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete surrender, whether from fear of offending her, or from reluctance to appear retrospectively to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which could always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first occasion), he resorted to the same pretext on the following days. If she had cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: 'It's most unfortunate; the cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've not been disturbed as they were the other night. i think, though, that this one isn't quite straight. May I see if they have more scent than the others?' Or else, if she had none: 'Oh! no cattleyas this evening; then there's no chance of my indulging in my little rearrangements.'"
-- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, p 255 of the Vintage International paperback edition Jan 15, 2008