Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various plants in the mustard family having pungent leaves, such as garden cress, watercress, or winter cress.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The common name of many species of plants, most of them of the natural order Cruciferæ.
  • noun The common garden-cress, Lepidium sativum.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A plant of various species, chiefly cruciferous. The leaves have a moderately pungent taste, and are used as a salad and antiscorbutic.
  • noun See under Bitter.
  • noun a common old proverb, now turned into the meaningless “not worth a curse.”

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

  • noun botany A plant of various species, chiefly cruciferous. The leaves have a moderately pungent taste, and are used as a salad and antiscorbutic.

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

  • noun any of various plants of the family Cruciferae with edible leaves that have a pungent taste
  • noun pungent leaves of any of numerous cruciferous herbs

Etymologies

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

[Middle English cresse, from Old English.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English cressa, from West Germanic *krasjon-. Cognate with Dutch kers, German Kresse.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Let Anaiah bless with the Dragon-fly, who sails over the pond by the wood-side and feedeth on the cressies. (from Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart)

    December 31, 2007