Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various herbs of the genus Trifolium in the pea family, having trifoliolate leaves and dense heads of small flowers and including species grown for forage, for erosion control, and as a source of nectar for honeybees.
  • noun Any of several other plants in the pea family, such as bush clover and sweet clover.
  • noun Any of several nonleguminous plants, such as water clover.
  • idiom (in clover) Living a carefree life of ease, comfort, or prosperity.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Texas, Marsilea macropoda, a plant of some forage value in shady bottoms. See Marsilea.
  • noun Same as annual red clover.
  • noun In California: Trifolium fucatum, a true clover, probably with some allied species or varieties. These are succulent plants with light-colored foliage.
  • noun T. obtusiflorum, a species having an acid taste and clammy with an acid exudation. The Indians regard it as one of the best for eating, the exudation being generally washed off. Also called salt clover and, as growing near springs, spring-clover.
  • noun Same as bear-clover.
  • noun A name of various common species of plants of the genus Trifolium, natural order Leguminosæ.
  • noun One of several plants of other genera belonging to the same order.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A plant of different species of the genus Trifolium; as the common red clover, Trifolium pratense, the white, Trifolium repens, and the hare's foot, Trifolium arvense.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a small weevil (Apion apricans), that destroys the seeds of clover.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the larva of a small moth (Asopia costalis), often very destructive to clover hay.
  • noun See Meliot.

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

  • noun botany A plant of the genus Trifolium with leaves usually divided into three (rarely four) leaflets and with white or red flowers.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a plant of the genus Trifolium

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English clāfre.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English clovere, claver, from Old English clāfre, earlier clǣfre, from Proto-Germanic *klaibrōn (compare Saterland Frisian Kleeuwer, Dutch klaver, dialectal Low German Kleeber, Kleewer), enlargement of *klaiwaz (compare Plautdietsch Kjlee, German Klee), from Proto-Indo-European *glei- ‘to stick’ (compare Old Church Slavonic glěvŭ ‘slime’, Ancient Greek  (gloiós, "glue, tar")). More at cleave, clay.

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  • a town in South Carolina, USA

    February 27, 2008