Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A form of cirrus in which the delicate cloudy filaments resemble a bushy, curved cat's tail.
  • noun Same as cattail
  • noun A name for the plant Equisetum arvense and other species of that genus.
  • noun Same as cirrus cloud. See cloud.

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

  • noun See timothy, cat-tail, cirrus.

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

  • noun tall marsh plant with cylindrical seed heads that explode when mature shedding large quantities of down; its long flat leaves are used for making mats and chair seats; of North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • A few of the streams were full of the fine plant which is popularly known by the name of bull-rush, or bulrush (_Typha latifólia_), but which ought by rights to be called the "cat's-tail" or "reed-mace."

    The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 Various

  • Everything was doing well; but it had been a late spring that year, and the cat's-tail was barely forming as yet, while the clover had just begun to show bloom.

    Wanderers Knut Hamsun 1905

  • Their lives are passed in the great sand plains and along the adjacent rivers; they subsist sometimes on fish, at other times on roots and the seeds of a plant, called the cat's-tail.

    The Adventures of Captain Bonneville Irving, Washington, 1783-1859 1850

  • Their lives are passed in the great sand plains and along the adjacent rivers; they subsist sometimes on fish, at other times on roots and the seeds of a plant, called the cat's-tail.

    The adventures of Captain Bonneville 1837

  • Their lives are passed in the great sand plains and along the adjacent rivers; they subsist sometimes on fish, at other times on roots and the seeds of a plant, called the cat's-tail.

    The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West Washington Irving 1821

  • -- this queer, misshapen thing, representing nothing save the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, and the address seemingly put on with a cat's-tail dipped in lampblack?

    Charles O'Malley — Volume 2 Charles James Lever 1839

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