Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A perennial Eurasian plant (Potentilla erecta) in the rose family, having yellow flowers and astringent roots.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A plant, Potentilla Tormentilla, of Europe and temperate Asia.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A rosaceous herb (
Potentilla Tormentilla ), the root of which is used as a powerful astringent, and for alleviating gripes, or tormina, in diarrhea.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
low -growing herb (Potentilla erecta).
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Yellow celandine, tormentil, and cinquefoil gleam as the sun rests on them.
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Yellow flowers of tormentil star the turf, gorse bushes cast shadows, and stunted bracken adds a sickly smell to the sweetness of summer grass.
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By the little bridge itself the turf is spangled with yellow quadrants of tormentil – a miniature heathland potentilla the woody, red, astringent rhizome of which was much prized by the apothecaries.
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Common grazing is no longer controlled by regular burning, and gorse bushes encroach on turf starred with tormentil.
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Where life is somewhat improved, they are now made of leather tanned with oak bark, as in other places, or with the bark of birch, or roots of tormentil, a substance recommended in defect of bark, about forty years ago, to the Irish tanners, by one to whom the parliament of that kingdom voted a reward.
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What fine old names they have, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore; archangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's wound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain!
Apologia Diffidentis 1905
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The bracken, waist-high at first, was like small hoops at the top of the wood, where the tiny golden tormentil made a carpet and the yellow pimpernel was closing her eager eyes.
Gone to Earth Mary Gladys Meredith Webb 1904
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The other contains prepared herbs which are useful as preventives -- tormentil, valerian, zedoary, angelica, and so forth; but I take it that pure vinegar is as good an antidote to infection as anything one can find.
The Sign of the Red Cross Evelyn Everett-Green 1894
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Their banks are bright with tormentil, blue with forget-me-not, rich in treasures of starry moss; the water is clear, cool in the hottest summer -- they rise under the shadow of the everlasting hills, and their goal is the sea.
The Gray Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse Michael Fairless 1885
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They made tea sometimes of the tormentil, whose little yellow flowers appear along the furrows.
Round About a Great Estate Richard Jefferies 1867
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