Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The plant cuckoo-pint or wake-robin, Arum maculatum: in allusion to its light- and dark-colored spadices, which suggest the two sexes. See Arum, Araceæ, and bulls-and-cows.
- noun The harlequin duck, Histrionicus minutus, on some parts of the North Atlantic coast of North America. See cut under
harlequin , a.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun common European arum with lanceolate spathe and short purple spadix; emerges in early spring; source of a starch called arum
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The cuckoopint is an arum that appears in our woods in April, and is also known as lords-and-ladies, starch-root, Adam-and-Eve, bobbins and Wake Robin.
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I give you this bouquetof saxifrage sneezewortspurge ragged robinasphodel lords-and-ladies.''
Poems for a wedding 2011
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I remember my mother's horror when I ate the lords-and-ladies berries that still grow by the garden walls.
Hancox: All under one roof Charlotte Moore 2010
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Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths, primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and cracking up little sticks that lay across the track.
The Woodlanders 2006
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The others tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you through gate or gap.
The Golden Age 1915
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The others tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you through gate or gap.
The Golden Age Kenneth Grahame 1895
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Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths, primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and cracking up little sticks that lay across the track.
The Woodlanders Thomas Hardy 1884
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The first business of this part of the tongue is, therefore, to warn us emphatically against caustic substances and corrosive acids, against vitriol and kerosene, spirits of wine and ether, capsicums and burning leaves or roots, such as those of the common English lords-and-ladies.
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
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Orchis-harlequins, cuckoo-plants, wild arums, more properly lords-and-ladies, were coming, and coming -- slowly; for had they not a long way to come, from the valley of the shadow of death into the land of life?
David Elginbrod George MacDonald 1864
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The annual survey of willd flowers by the charity Plantlife found plants that can tolerate high levels of nitrogen from the artificial fertilisers used in farming, like the common nettle, cow parsley and lords-and-ladies, are flourishing.
EcoEarth.Info Environment RSS Newsfeed info@ecologicalinternet.org (Telegraph: Louise Gra 2010
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