Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. See sheep laurel.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The sheep-laurel, Kalmia angustifolia.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A small American ericaceous shrub (Kalmia angustifolia), resembling mountain laurel but having narrower leaves and small red flowers; -- called also
calfkill ,sheepkill ,sheep laurel , etc. It is supposed to poison young sheep and other animals that eat it at times when the snow is deep and they cannot find other food.
WordNet 3.0
- n. North American dwarf shrub resembling mountain laurel but having narrower leaves and small red flowers; poisonous to young stock
Etymologies
- lamb + kill (Wiktionary)
- From its poisonous effect on sheep. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there — the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, lambkill, azalea, and rhodora — all standing in the quaking sphagnum.”
“Through what some would consider rough woods and bleak pasture land, in a little sheep-track, crooked and sometimes steep, over her hung like a white cloud the wild thorn tree, large golddusted cymes of viburnums, rose-blooming lambkill, and other sorts, suggested all she knew, and more than she knew, of the Gardens of Princes.”
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