Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of several eastern North American plants of the genus Cardamine, such as the crinkleroot, having fleshy rhizomes and palmately divided leaves.
- n. A parasitic European plant (Lathraea squamaria) having scaly cream-colored or pink stems and pinkish flowers.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A plant, Lathræa squamaria, so named from the tooth-like scales on the rootstock and the base of the stem, or according to some from the capsules, which when half-ripe strongly simulate human teeth. Also called clown's lungwort.
- n. A plant of the genus Dentaria: same as coralwort, 1.
- n. See Plumbago, 2.
- n. The shepherd's-purse, Capsella Bursapastoris: an old use.
Wiktionary
- n. Any of several species of flowering plants, of the genus Lathraea.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A plant whose roots are fancied to resemble teeth, as certain plants of the genus Lathræa, and various species of Dentaria. See coralwort.
WordNet 3.0
- n. North American herb with pungent scaly or toothed roots
Etymologies
- tooth + wort (Wiktionary)
- From its tooth-shaped scales. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Hawk and I would push our way into the bush, plucking berries, digging up edible roots such as Indian potatoes and toothwort, pinching the heads from puffball mushrooms, stripping bark from hickory trees, which we boiled, to soften it.”
“Cut leaf toothwort is out, in the Central Ohio rain.”
“He put the new bag among the others, taking time to consider the collection: toothwort, columbine, bloodroot.”
“Leafless herbs like beechdrops, lavender toothwort, and various bright-flowered small orchids, often without green leaves, were everywhere, growing from the roots of other living plants or their decaying remains.”
“The toothwort (_dentaria laciniata_) is sometimes known as the pepper-root, and every school boy and girl living near the woods is familiar with the taste of its tubers and the appearance of its cross-shaped flowers.”
“Pink: -- Spring beauty, toothwort, dog's tooth violet, hepatica.”
“But she found, among others, "Dutchman's breeches," the funny little white flower that looks like long underwear hanging upside down, and cut-leaved toothwort.”
The Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines - washingtonpost.com
“Also along the trail were my first views of early spring wildflowers, with clumps of Dutchman's breeches, cut-leaved toothwort and spring beauties.”
“For example, club member Francy Cash recently discovered one of spring's early flowers, toothwort, or dentaria, abloom several paces off the trail.”
“An Easter afternoon walk in KrisMar Woods was made more pleasant by the bluets, spring beauties, crowfoot toothwort, purple toothwort (almost through flowering), violets, gill-over-the-ground and re ...”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘toothwort’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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A Toothy List
canine tooth, pin-tooth, stomach-tooth, bulb of a tooth, by the skin of on..., cardinal teeth, clean as a hound'..., elephant's-tooth, toothshell, hake's-tooth, cut one's teeth, lie through one's... and 93 more...
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Worts and all
I have in mind the worts associated with a green thumb rather than a green beer - but as you can see by the name, I'll accept anything you have to offer.
butterwort, spiderwort, quillwort, woundwort, nipplewort, bellwort, liverwort, milkwort, water pennywort, navelwort, toothwort, wort and 128 more...
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The Worts
Maybe I'm just hallucinating that there isn't a list for this botanical category yet...
mugwort, starwort, stitchwort, woundwort, pondwort, sweetwort, liverwort, spleenwort, toothwort, lungwort, adderwort, worrywort and 9 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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