Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several Eurasian shrubs of the genus Daphne, often cultivated for their glossy evergreen foliage and clusters of small, fragrant, bell-shaped flowers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun in botany, a genus of small erect or trailing shrubs of the natural order Thymeleaceœ, including about 40 species of the temperate regions of Europe and Asia.
  • noun A plant of this genus.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A genus of diminutive Shrubs, mostly evergreen, and with fragrant blossoms.
  • noun (Myth.) A nymph of Diana, fabled to have been changed into a laurel tree.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun botany Any one of least 50 species of shrub of the Thymelaeaceae family, some of which are grown as ornamentals.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of several ornamental shrubs with shiny mostly evergreen leaves and clusters of small bell-shaped flowers
  • noun (Greek mythology) a nymph who was transformed into a laurel tree to escape the amorous Apollo

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin daphnē, laurel, from Greek.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Ancient Greek δάφνη (daphnē, "laurel").

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