Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A common name for the cultivated species of Dictamnus, particularly D. Fraxinella.

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

  • noun Eurasian perennial herb with white flowers that emit flammable vapor in hot weather

Etymologies

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

[New Latin, diminutive of Latin fraxinus, ash tree; see bherəg- in Indo-European roots.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word fraxinella.

Examples

  • I dare say he meant the _dictamnus fraxinella, _ which is sometimes luminous.

    Old Calabria Norman Douglas 1910

  • The best perennial hardy plant I know for this purpose is the gas plant (_Dictamnus fraxinella_), which, when once established, remains a joy, almost forever.

    Making a Garden of Perennials 1885

  • To the right of them sprang up the slim fraxinella, the centranthus draped with snowy blossoms, and the greyish hounds-tongue, in each of whose tiny flowercups gleamed a dewdrop.

    La faute de l'Abbe Mouret ��mile Zola 1871

  • It seemed as if a sudden flash of anger went over him, like the flash that glides along the glutinous stem of the fraxinella, when you touch it with a candle; the next moment it had utterly vanished, and was forgotten as if it had never been.

    Malbone: an Oldport romance 1869

  • It seemed as if a sudden flash of anger went over him, like the flash that glides along the glutinous stem of the fraxinella, when you touch it with a candle; the next moment it had utterly vanished, and was forgotten as if it had never been.

    Malbone: an Oldport Romance Thomas Wentworth Higginson 1867

  • I fancied that my Sunday coat was scented for days afterwards by the bushes of sweetbriar and the fraxinella that perfumed the air.

    Cousin Phillis Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • Virgin -- hollyhocks, fraxinella, monk's-hood, pansies, primroses; every flower which blooms profusely in charming old-fashioned country gardens was there, depicted among its graceful foliage, but not in the wild disorder in which I have enumerated them.

    Ruth Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • There was a well in the centre with roses trained over it, roses of the dark old damask kind and the dainty musk, used to be distilled for the eyes, some flowers lingering still; there was the brown dittany or fraxinella, whose dried blossoms are phosphoric at night; delicate pink centaury, good for ague; purple mallows, good for wounds; leopard's bane with yellow blossoms; many and many more old and dear friends of Grisell, redolent of Wilton cloister and Sister

    Grisly Grisell Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.