Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of catkin.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • What we see to-day are often called catkins, but the name which country children give them is lambs'-tails.

    Wildflowers of the Farm Arthur Owens Cooke

  • Willow flowers, called catkins, were downright tiny.

    The Orange County Register - News Headlines : Top Stories By PAT BRENNAN 2010

  • Magic cats were supposed to grow from pussy-willows or "catkins," to become witches' malkins familiars: hence the saying that all cats were gray in the beginning.

    Helen of Troy Jan 2009

  • It is not where these yellow "catkins" are dancing on the twigs to-day that the hazel nuts will appear in autumn.

    Wildflowers of the Farm Arthur Owens Cooke

  • I walk around my neighborhood and spy catkins hanging from an aspen tree.

    Writer Unboxed » Blog Archive » The Post Book Crash 2010

  • Really enjoyed this — especially being new to the area and picking up on little things in your post — like I heard about catkins for the first time a few weeks ago, and now I see the word again.

    Writer Unboxed » Blog Archive » The Post Book Crash 2010

  • Tall, well over six foot, but a bendy, willowy uncertain tall, brown one-year sapling rather than slow growing sturdy branch, the tree metaphor extended by the catkins of his light brown dreadlocks, loose and shot with streaks of blondness denoting, she thought fancifully, the several summers he had lived through since he first grew them.

    Occasional sunshine Sandra Davies 2011

  • A thaw was forecast, but spring still seemed far off, although a few swelling, furry catkins were beginning to show, and the drake mallards in immaculate breeding plumage in a quiet river backwater certainly seemed to have sensed change in the air.

    Country diary: Teesdale 2011

  • Despite the grey heavens and bitter northerlies there is something decorative, even festive about the way the catkins tremble in the alder trees on Ducan's Marsh.

    Country diary: Claxton, Norfolk 2011

  • Unlike the hazel catkins nearby, which release wind-wafted puffs of lemon pollen when I touch them, the alder's seems altogether meaner.

    Country diary: Claxton, Norfolk 2011

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