Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various garden plants of the genus Paeonia, having large, variously colored flowers with numerous stamens and several pistils.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Any plant of the genus Pæonia, which comprises strong-growing showy perennials, familiar in gardens.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A plant, and its flower, of the ranunculaceous genus Pæonia. Of the four or five species, one is a shrub; the rest are perennial herbs with showy flowers, often double in cultivation.

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

  • noun any of numerous plants widely cultivated for their showy single or double red or pink or white flowers

Etymologies

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

[Middle English pione, from Old English pēonie and Anglo-Norman peonie, both from Medieval Latin peōnia, from Latin paeōnia, from Greek paiōniā, perhaps from Paiōn, Apollo, physician of the gods.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English peonie, peonia et al., from Latin paeōnia; later reinforced by Anglo-Norman peonie, Old French peone, from Latin paeōnia, from Hellenistic Ancient Greek παιωνία, from Ancient Greek Παιών (Paiōn, "Paean, the physician of the gods; a physician").

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