Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various ornamental, mostly climbing plants of the genus Clematis, native chiefly to northern temperate regions and having showy, variously colored flowers or decorative fruit clusters.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A genus of plants, mostly herbaceous climbers. natural order Ranunculaceæ. There are many species, natives of temperate climates. The flowers are without petals, but the sepals are petaloid and often large and brightly colored. The fruit is a head of many achenia, with long bearded styles. C. Vitalba is a common species of Europe, known as traveler's-joy, virgin's-bower, or old-man's-beard, which runs over hedges, loading them first with its copious clusters of white blossoms, and afterward with its plumose-tailed, silky heads. The virgin's-bower of the United States, C. Virginiana, is a similar species. There are many forms in cultivation, with large flowers of various colors, mostly varieties or hybrids that have been obtained from
C. Viticella of Europe, C. lanuginosa of China, and the Japanese speciesC. florida, C. azurea, and C. Fortunei. - n. [lowercase] A plant of the genus Clematis.
Wiktionary
- n. botany Any plant of the genus Clematis, vigorous climbing lianas found throughout the temperate zones.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A genus of flowering plants, of many species, mostly climbers, having feathery styles, which greatly enlarge in the fruit; -- called also
virgin's bower .
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of various ornamental climbing plants of the genus Clematis usually having showy flowers
Etymologies
- Latin clēmatis, a creeping plant, from Greek klēmatis, from klēma, klēmat-, twig. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Bookboxed – the clematis is one of the stars of the garden, it’s true.”
“The additional trees and shrubs in flower are the tamarisk, altheas, Venetian sumach, pomegranates, the beautiful passion-flower, the trumpet flower, and the virgin's bower or clematis, which is such a quick and handsome climber.”
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 10, No. 267, August 4, 1827
“And the only drawback to climbing roses is their bare legs; I use their woody-stemmed canes as living supports for loose-limbed, delicate vines such as clematis, love-in-a-puff and sweet peas or I plant perennials or shrubs in front of them.”
The Huffington Post: Suzy Bales: Up, Up and Away With Climbing Roses (PHOTOS)
“Their only draw back is their bare legs so I use the woody-stemmed canes of the roses as living supports for loose-limbed, delicate vines such as clematis, love-in-a puff, honeysuckle and sweet peas.”
“Spirea Van Houttii, best known as Bridal Wreath, we might include and a few of the hardy vines if a trellis or other support was given for them, such as clematis paniculata, coccinea and jackmani, the large purple and white honeysuckle, Chinese matrimony vine, etc.”
“A quick rush of embarrassment flooded to the Majors cheeks and he smoothed helplessly at the lap of his crimson, clematis-covered housecoat with hands that felt like spades.”
“He started fumbling for the pockets of his trousers, which were somewhere under the clematis.”
“A black and yellow Monarch glided over the trellis, fluttering its wings as it perched on the clematis leaf.”
Simon & Schuster: Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving and Recovery
“My eyes fixed on a cocoon attached to the bottom side of a green clematis leaf winding around the trellis.”
Simon & Schuster: Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving and Recovery
“I fired off an email to the Board and the Landscape Committee demanding an apology and suggesting that I should be reimbursed for the plants that I can replace (the clematis cannot be replaced …).”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘clematis’.
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The Request Line
This is the place to add words you'd like Charles Harrington Elster to pronounce for you!
swingeing, affiant, dahlia, hydrangea, re, clematis, Nabokov, casu marzu, schadenfreudgeon, nefarious, mewl, manteion and 170 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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maygra
apropos, advantageous, perception, discombobulated, adumbrate, apogee, perihelion, mortmain, solitudinous, mediastinus, asumbrative, traveler and 498 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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Madame Bovary
Some good words (chiefly French of origin, and often to do with the medical profession) encountered reading the Aveling translation -- mostly new to me, but a few words that are just worthy of bein...
tulle, argand, friable, corolla, lives of stir, difficile, rime, inveigh, feuilleton, peristyle, refulgence, wainscoting and 98 more...
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Flora and Fauna
poa annua, pooka, vole, bestiary, popple, turgor, starling, sharpy, copse, coreopsis, clove, corvid and 348 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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Chromonyms
These chromonyms are defined as colors in at least one dictionary (mostly MW3). (Actually there's one fake, for reasons I'll explain someday.) They are all one-word nouns such as "kelly", which can...
absinthe, acacia, acorn, alabaster, alesan, almond, aloma, amaranth, amber, amethyst, anemone, anil and 821 more...
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Summer 12
accoast, agog, alarums, alembic, anapest, animadvert, anoraked, apostasy, aquarelle, argentated, aubergine, auscultation and 197 more...
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littlespoons's Words
euphoria, vociferous, sanguine, ardent, fulsome, loyal, green, gourd, cucumber, marvel, fond, dahlia and 43 more...
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apopheniac's Words
empyrean, factitious, bedizened, bafflegab, auxetic, cucurbitaceous, tergiversate, apopheniac, picayune, refractory, supine, indite and 70 more...
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wilde
prudery, milieu, mephitic, putrefaction, equerry, carnelian, hydropic, antithetical, antinomian, facile, laburnum, tussore and 67 more...
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Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening: ...
being things I remember from my mother's gardens, including flower, vegetable and shrubbery.
poppy, foxglove, snapdragon, iris, marigold, lily, clematis, rose, peony, nasturtium, petunia, phlox and 58 more...
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vegetation
names of plants, flowers, trees, etc.
laburnum, mignonette, ilex, vetch, sedge, gentian, plane, linden, jade plant, ginkgo, dragon tree, agave and 50 more...
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mary, mary, quite contrary
jonquil, cypress, hydrangea, phlox, clematis, japonica, willow, columbine, petunia, lianas, hosta, magnolia and 47 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for clematis.
reesetee I agree. So I just avoid saying it. Which is more difficult than you might think when it's growing in your own backyard. Dec 1, 2007
chained_bear Well, OK, but I pronounce it cleh-MAH-tis, and I still think it sounds dirty. Even with the accent on the middle sylLAble. Dec 1, 2007
reesetee It sounds most dirty when you emphasize the first syllable, I think. (Some pronounce it with emphasis on the second.) Nov 30, 2007
chained_bear This always sounded like a dirty word to me. Pretty flowers, but... don't like the word much. Nov 30, 2007