Log in or Sign up
  1. mignonette love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Any of several Mediterranean plants of the genus Reseda, especially R. odorata, widely cultivated for its terminal, dense, spikelike clusters of very fragrant but inconspicuous greenish flowers.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A well-known plant, Reseda odorata, native in northern Africa. Its racemes of small greenish-white flowers with prominent brown anthers are not showy, but the plant is a universal favorite in gardens on account of its fragrance. In ordinary culture it is an annual, but it is naturally shrubby, and by proper care can be made to thrive for several years in the form of tree-mignonette. The perfume is best extracted by enfleurage.
  2. n. Some other species of the genus Reseda. The white mignonette, R. alba, a tall plant with white scentless blossoms, has sometimes been cultivated. The wild or dyer's mignonette, R. luteola, is better known as dyer's-weed or yellow-weed. See dyer's-weed

Wiktionary

  1. n. A plant (Reseda odorata) having greenish flowers with orange-colored stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb.
  2. n. A grey-green colour, like that of the plant.
  3. adj. Of a grey-green colour, like that of the plant.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. (Bot.) A plant (Reseda odorata) having greenish flowers with orange-colored stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. Mediterranean woody annual widely cultivated for its dense terminal spikelike clusters greenish or yellowish white flowers having an intense spicy fragrance

Etymologies

  1. French mignonette, from mignon ("dainty") + -ette ("diminutive suffix"). (Wiktionary)
  2. French, from feminine of mignonnet, dainty, pretty, from Old French, diminutive of mignon, lover, dainty. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “Either she would be very severe, flat back and front, or she would be tall, fair, dressed in mignonette green, name – Daisy, and smelling of rather sweetish lavender water.”

    Bliss, and Other Stories

  • “In order to break up extremes of colours you can always use masses of white flowers, or something like mignonette, which is in effect green.”

    The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming.

  • “In the garden-borders the mignonette is a very inconspicuous little plant, and passes almost unnoticed beside the flaunting gaudiness of the dahlia or the showy spikes of the hollyhock, yet it is from that modest, low-growing, grey-green flower that comes the sweetness that perfumes the whole air, for the most optimistic person would hardly expect fragrance from dahlias or hollyhocks.”

    Here, There and Everywhere

  • “Plants which only live one year, such as mignonette, the sweet pea, and the poppy, take in just enough food to supply their daily wants and to make the seeds we shall speak of presently.”

    The Fairy-Land of Science

  • “Is that mignonette which is so oppressively fragrant?' she asked, lifting the bouquet to her nose.”

    Ernest Linwood or, The Inner Life of the Author

  • “Yellow: champagne (19); lemon (22), and reseda (mignonette) (22);”

    Further thoughts about “Pavlova”

  • “The best, though, is also the simplest appropriate, as "Desnuda" is Spanish for "nude" or "bare": raw Beau Soleil oysters with chipotle mignonette, shallot-tosazu gelee and other seasonal sauces.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Bare on the Half Shell

  • “Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal Oysters, with shallot-tozazu gelee and chipotle mignonette.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Bare on the Half Shell

  • “Inside the walls of outwardly ramshackle homes, roses crept alongside flowering myrtle, fragrant jasmine, mignonette, six-foot-tall scarlet dahlias stood next to orange, pink, and purple bougainvillea.”

    Ajijic: the way we were

  • “I started with oysters on the half shell with a mignonette sauce simple because I don't remember a meal I've eaten at the Milky Way without oysters.”

    Archive 2008-04-01

Show 10 more examples...

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. reseda

same context (23)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. pansy
  2. phlox
  3. heliotrope
  4. hyacinth
  1. peony
  2. aster
  3. narcissus
  4. jonquils
  1. tulip
  2. honeysuckle
  3. lupin
  4. snapdragon
  1. gardenia
  2. verbena
  3. azaleas
  4. columbine
  1. wildflowers
  2. lilac
  3. geranium
  4. poppy
  1. oleander
  2. cornflower
  3. sunflower

reverse dictionary (13)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. tree-mignonette
  2. lawsonia
  1. dyer's broom
  2. base-rocket
  1. reseda
  2. reseda luteola
  1. resedaceae
  2. dyer's mignonette
  1. dyer's rocket
  2. family resedaceae
  1. genus reseda
  2. mignonette family
  1. weld

tags (3)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. flower
  1. green
  1. cvccvcvccv

Log in or sign up to add your own tag.

Wordmap

(beta)

Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘mignonette’.

More lists containing ‘mignonette’

Comments

No comments yet...

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

Tweets

Looking for tweets for mignonette.

‘mignonette’ has been looked up 1745 times, added to 19 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 13.