Definitions

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

  • adjective Yielding or having to do with honey.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Producing honey, as a plant; mellific.
  • Bearing or preparing honey, as a bee; specifically, of or pertaining to the Mellifera.

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

  • adjective Producing honey.

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

  • adjective Bearing honey
  • adjective botany Bearing any substance that is collected by bees to produce honey

Etymologies

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

[From Latin mellifer : mel, mell-, honey; see melit- in Indo-European roots + -fer, -fer.]

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Examples

  • Philogynist elsewhere in the world, px is busy like a melliferous thing:

    Archive 2007-07-01 2007

  • Philogynist elsewhere in the world, px is busy like a melliferous thing:

    Philogynist 2007

  • Honey is procured by steeping the cones of the Banksia or other melliferous flowers in water.

    An account of the manners and customs of the Aborigines and the state of their relations with Europeans, by Edward John Eyre 2004

  • Already he had the melliferous taste of victory on his tongue.

    Warlock Smith, Wilbur 2001

  • We find even to-day, among the melliferous hymenoptera, all the stages of progressive civilisation of our own domestic bee.

    The Life of the Bee Maurice Maeterlinck 1905

  • The great idle drones, asleep in unconscious groups on the melliferous walls, are rudely torn from their slumbers by an army of wrathful virgins.

    The Life of the Bee Maurice Maeterlinck 1905

  • Grelet was a skilled apiarist, and replenished his melliferous flocks by wild swarms enticed from the forests.

    White Shadows in the South Seas Frederick O'Brien 1900

  • His eyes were dim with pleasure long drawn out; they saw nothing, and it was some moments before the pallor and pain of Frank's face dispelled the melliferous

    Mike Fletcher A Novel 1892

  • None of the melliferous clan, in my neighbourhood at least, is stirring as early as she is.

    Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

  • These females spend the winter in their cells, as do many of the early-hatching melliferous insects, such as Anthophorae and Mason-bees, who build their nests in the spring, the larvae reaching the perfect state in the summer and yet remaining shut up in their cells until the following May.

    Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Comments

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  • Yielding or producing honey.

    November 20, 2007