Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An aromatic woolly plant (Origanum dictamnus) in the mint family, native to Crete and formerly believed to have magical powers.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A common name in England for the plant Dictamnus albus.
- noun In the United States, Cunila Mariana, a fragrant labiate of the Atlantic States.
- noun A labiate, Origanum Dictamnus, the so-called dittany of Crete.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A plant of the Mint family (
Origanum Dictamnus ), a native of Crete. - noun The
Dictamnus Fraxinella . Seedictamnus . - noun In America, the
Cunila Mariana , a fragrant herb of the Mint family.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun botany A
labiate plant, Origanum dictamnus, formerly renowned for its medicinal properties; dittany of Crete.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun Eurasian perennial herb with white flowers that emit flammable vapor in hot weather
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Since stags and hinds, when deeply wounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called dittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the shafts come out and all is well again; even as kind
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002
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Since stags and hinds, when deeply wounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called dittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the shafts come out and all is well again; even as kind
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002
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Since stags and hinds, when deeply wounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called dittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the shafts come out and all is well again; even as kind Venus cured her beloved byblow Aeneas when he was wounded on the right thigh with an arrow by
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 4 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518
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Wild goats in Crete are said, when wounded by arrows, to go in search of dittany, which is supposed to have the property of ejecting arrows in the body.
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But dittany, which is to be had in the woods all the while those insects remain in vigor, is a sure defence against them.
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I had collected a pocketful of eyebright and dittany by the time they finished talking and Hugh Munro rose to go.
Sick Cycle Carousel 2010
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The snake hit you too, but I've cleaned the wound and put some dittany on it ...
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Rowling, J. K. 2007
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They were wincing as they dabbed essence of dittany onto their many injuries.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Rowling, J. K. 2007
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They were wincing as they dabbed essence of dittany onto their many injuries.
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Rowling, J. K. 2007
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Within minutes he was absorbed in the problem of whether the "dittanders" of Aelfric was, or was not, the same as his own "dittany".
The Devil's Novice Peters, Ellis, 1913- 1983
bilby commented on the word dittany
Lol, love the definition. So much for sneaking out for a fag in the garden.
April 15, 2008
reesetee commented on the word dittany
Also called fraxinella or "gas plant." I think I'll pass.
Oh...sorry. That was horribly accidental.
April 15, 2008
bilby commented on the word dittany
Right.
April 15, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word dittany
Usage on confectio Damocritis. Also on eyebright.
October 16, 2008
pjbaldes commented on the word dittany
past tense response to questioning of non question: "oh no he didn't"
example: dittany he just steal my slim jim?
June 19, 2010
dailyword commented on the word dittany
Hermione used this on Ron's arm after he got splinched.
June 26, 2012
qms commented on the word dittany
The brewing herbs and spew of ocean
The witches list with fierce devotion.
There's eel tongue and dittany
In that potent litany.
The chant is stronger than the potion.
March 26, 2015
chained_bear commented on the word dittany
"Neckam takes us right into the warmth of a high-class kitchen in the twelfth century, but he gives us more than a list of equipment, recommending cumin sauce for stewed ham, mentioning three kinds of sausage (andulyes, saucistres and pudingis) and giving fine directions for roasting pork with a little salt to make its rind really crunchy. In a separate work on horticulture called De naturis rerum, he catalogued an expanding range of tasty culinary herbs including parsley, fennel, coriander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, sorrel, thyme, saffron, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuce, garden cress and the strong-smelling rue also used to treat snakebite and poor eyesight. Rosemary would arrive in the 1340s with Queen Philippa, but pumpkins, cucumbers and spinach-like orache were now cultivated in kitchen gardens, and we can assume that turnips and woody carrots known as skirrets were grown, though oddly they did not begin to appear in gardening treatises until the fifteenth century."
--Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 48
January 8, 2017