Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A low-growing plant (Asperugo procumbens) with small blue flowers, native to Eurasia and naturalized in North America.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A plant of the genus Alyssum.
- noun [As if a contraction of madderwort, having been used as a substitute for madder.] A plant of the borage family, Asperugo proeumbens, whose root was used like madder: commonly called
German madwort .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A genus of cruciferous plants (Alyssum) with white or yellow flowers and rounded pods.
Alyssum maritimum is the commonly cultivated sweet alyssum, a fragrant white-flowered annual.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of the
alyssums .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any garden plant of the genus Alyssum having clusters of small yellow or white flowers
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Sense 1, perhaps alteration (influenced by madder) of Dutch mede, madder + wort (from the use of A. procumbens to make a dye ). Sense 2, originally a name for various plants supposed to cure rabies, and later also for plants of the genus Alyssum : mad, rabid + wort (partial translation of Latin alyssum, from Greek alusson; see alyssum).]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
mad + wort
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