Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or characteristic of the orchid family.
- adjective Suggesting an orchid flower in extravagance, exoticism, or luxuriant beauty.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to the orchids; belonging to the natural order Orchidaceæ.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Bot.) Pertaining to, or resembling, a natural order (Orchidaceæ) of endogenous plants of which the genus Orchis is the type. They are mostly perennial herbs having the stamens and pistils united in a single column, and normally three petals and three sepals, all adherent to the ovary. The flowers are curiously shaped, often resembling insects, the odd or lower petal (called the
lip ) being unlike the others, and sometimes of a strange and unexpected appearance. About one hundred species occur in the United States, but several thousand in the tropics.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective botany Of or pertaining to
orchids . - adjective Characterized by ostentatiousness; showy.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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It was one of those brilliant orchidaceous days on the North Shore of Oahu, under the towering palms.
Beard 2010
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THE DAY THEY ARRIVED in New York, they had aimed the Airstream directly for Seventy-third and Broadway, where a one-bedroom apartment awaited them in the orchidaceous Ansonia Hotel.
Skinny Legs and All Robbins, Tom 1990
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Then says Reason, if they occur in orchidaceous plants, why should they not also occur in corn plants? for it is not likely that such vagaries will be confined to one little group in the vegetable kingdom; it is more rational to believe them to be a part of the _general system_ of creation ....
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The following details all refer to flowers in which the number of stamens in orchidaceous plants was increased beyond what is necessary.
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters
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Thus, if, in an orchidaceous plant, a sepal be displaced from any cause, or a petal be twisted out of its natural position to occupy the place of an absent sepal, that petal will be sepal-like in form, and _vice versâ_.
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters
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If it is such an orchidaceous rarity as the world of worshippers would have us believe, then we know it must be the parasitic equivalent of our existence feeding upon the health of other functions and sensibilities in ourselves.
Adventures in the Arts Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets Marsden Hartley
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In some orchids there is no caudicle to the pollen-masses, and the grains are merely tied together by fine threads; but as these are not confined to orchids, they need not here be considered; yet I may mention that at the base of the orchidaceous series, in Cypripedium, we can see how the threads were probably first developed.
VII. Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection 1909
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Nearly all our orchidaceous plants absolutely require the visits of insects to remove their pollen-masses and thus to fertilise them.
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No one plays a love scene better, but it is a picture of love that she gives, a strange orchidaceous picture rather than a suggestion of the ordinary human passion as felt by ordinary human people.
The Story of My Life Terry, Ellen, Dame, 1847-1928 1908
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The simple old type of manhood is lost long since in endless orchidaceous variation.
Prose Fancies Richard Le Gallienne 1906
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