orchid

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
“
A ride over the hills brought us to a wood of oaks, with their branches fringed with the long grey Spanish moss, and a profusion of epiphytes clinging to their bark, some splendidly in flower, showing the fantastic shapes and brilliant colours one sees in English orchid-houses.

View all »
Definitions (11)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A member of the orchid family.
  2. noun The flower of any of these plants, especially one cultivated for ornament.
  3. noun A pale to light purple, from grayish to purplish pink to strong reddish purple.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (6)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples

  • The foliage itself is rather pale -- orchid, heliotrope and violet predominate -- but the boles of the trees are gorgeous. —  Lost on Venus
  • My Vanda orchid is always a faithful bloomer, once it gets a taste of the outdoors.
  • A ride over the hills brought us to a wood of oaks, with their branches fringed with the long grey Spanish moss, and a profusion of epiphytes clinging to their bark, some splendidly in flower, showing the fantastic shapes and brilliant colours one sees in English orchid-houses. —  Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern
  • He knew it to be an orchid, an especially rare orchid, and he knew, also, that the orchid was the favorite flower of Miss Armitage. —  A Charmed Life
  • Beck said successfully transplanting the orchid is almost impossible. —  News & Features from Minnesota Public Radio
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Words tagged orchid

Cirrhopetalum · cirrhopetalum

Stats

Orchid has been looked up 233 times, favorited 0 times, listed 54 times, and commented on twice.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From New Latin Orchideae, family name, from Latin orchis, a kind of orchid, from Greek orkhis, testicle, orchid (from the shape of its tubers).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from orchis, Latin orchis (stem erroneously assumed to be orchid-): see Orchis.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈɔrkɪd/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word several times a year.

Recent Lookups

interlocutress · zygote · anhydrous · dawdle · erp

Recent Favorites

TelePalmter · Espoo · stick-to-it-iveness · supine · doxastic

Recent Pronunciations

milosrdenstvi · lichen-covered · futon · sagacity · monoragngocious