Definitions

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

  • noun A usually flat-topped or convex flower cluster in which the main axis and each branch end in a flower that opens before the flowers below or to the side of it.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany: An inflorescence of the definite or determinate class; any form of inflorescence in which the primary axis bears a single terminal flower which develops first, the inflorescence being continued by secondary, tertiary, and other axes.
  • noun A panicle, the elongation of all the ramifications of which is arrested so that it has the appearance of an umbel.
  • noun In architecture, same as cyma.
  • noun Also cima.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A flattish or convex flower cluster, of the centrifugal or determinate type, differing from a corymb chiefly in the order of the opening of the blossoms.

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

  • noun erroneous form of senna
  • noun obsolete, rare A “head” (of unexpanded leaves, etc.); an opening bud.
  • noun botany A flattish or convex flower cluster, of the centrifugal or determinate type, on which each axis terminates with a flower which blooms before the flowers below it. Contrast raceme.
  • noun architecture = cyma

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

  • noun more or less flat-topped cluster of flowers in which the central or terminal flower opens first

Etymologies

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

[Latin cȳma, young cabbage sprout, from Greek kūma, anything swollen, sprout; see cyma.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

An error for cynne, probably resulting from the overlapping of the two ens in handwriting.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the French cime, cyme ("top”, “summit"), from the Vulgar Latin cima, from the Latin cȳma ("young sprout of a cabbage”, “spring shoots of cabbage"), from the Ancient Greek κῦμα (kūma, "anything swollen, such as a wave or billow”; “fetus”, “embryo”, “sprout of a plant"), from κύω (kuō, "I conceive”, “I become pregnant”; in the aorist “I impregnate"). For considerably more information, see cyma.

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