ilex

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The crying need of all nature was for shade; for the ilex is a small-leaved tree giving a thin shadow with no cool depths amid the branches.

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Definitions (3)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun Any of various trees or shrubs of the genus Ilex; holly.

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Examples (50)

  • Here lord Aeneas set up a goal of leafy ilex, a mark for the sailors to know whence to return, where to wheel their long course round. —  The Aeneid of Virgil
  • Cistus, myrtle and cactus; cytisus, lentisk, arbutus; daphne, heath, broom, juniper and ilex--these few I recognised, but there was no end to their varieties and none to their tangle of colours. —  Two Sides of the Face Midwinter Tales
  • Where's my tree He was standing close to a beautifully shaped ilex, and for a few moments he could not make out the great spiral-barked chestnut, till, just as he began to fancy that he had lost his way at once, he caught sight of its glossy bronzed leaves behind the greyish green ilex That's all right," he said. —  !Tention A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War
  • Many nights, though autumnal mists were spread around, I passed under an ilex--many times I have supped on arbutus berries and chestnuts, making a fire, gypsy-like, on the ground--because wild natural scenery reminded me less acutely of my hopeless state of loneliness. —  The Last Man
  • There are the oak and the opaque ilex, the pine and the poplar, the dark, funereal cypress, the bright flower of the too-short-lived rose, and the sweet-scented bed of violets. —  Horace and His Influence
 

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Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, holm oak, from Latin īlex.
 

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