Definitions

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

  • adjective Green or slightly green.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Slightly green; greenish.

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

  • adjective Slightly green; greenish.

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

  • adjective Having a greenish hue; becoming somewhat green in color.

Etymologies

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

[Late Latin viridēscēns, viridēscent-, present participle of viridēscere, to become green, from Latin viridis, green; see virid.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

C 1850 from Late Latin viridescens, present participle of viridescere; see virescent

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Examples

  • Two green hairstreak butterflies, gracefully viridescent, dance past on a soft wind that sifts through reeds, sets waving the tall golden flower stems of bog asphodel, and silky white plumes of cottongrass that has colonised the old peat-diggings.

    Country diary: Tregaron, Ceredigon 2011

  • At dawn that morning, the truck driver had pulled up in the fourteen-wheeler to a grassy clearing on the north bank of the Tana River, where crocodiles skulked in typhoidal water in the viridescent shadow of mangrove trees.

    Peace Meals Anna Badkhen 2010

  • At dawn that morning, the truck driver had pulled up in the fourteen-wheeler to a grassy clearing on the north bank of the Tana River, where crocodiles skulked in typhoidal water in the viridescent shadow of mangrove trees.

    Peace Meals Anna Badkhen 2010

  • Always wanting the greener grass in the past or the future, even though we're standing on the lushest, viridescent field we've ever seen?

    mrbradley Diary Entry mrbradley 2009

  • The tea menu is a tiny piece of delight, with descriptions that blithely use words like "velutinous" and "viridescent" and "vegetal" to describe their oolongs and whites and blacks.

    Archive 2008-10-01 Megan Kurashige 2008

  • The tea menu is a tiny piece of delight, with descriptions that blithely use words like "velutinous" and "viridescent" and "vegetal" to describe their oolongs and whites and blacks.

    surrounded by books Megan Kurashige 2008

  • They were viridescent, almost metallic hued — verd-antique.

    The Moon Pool 2004

  • The promontory on which Sorrento stands is barren enough, but southward rise pleasant cliffs viridescent with samphire, and beyond them purple hills dotted with white spots of houses.

    The Life of Sir Richard Burton 2003

  • They seemed to taint the lower atmosphere with their glow, so that it did not surprise Gren to see cloud bars of viridescent hue, striping the sky.

    HOTHOUSE Aldiss, Brian 1962

  • They were made of every one of the light, hard, ornamental substances: glittering glassein, the colorful but opaque Ordine plastic, viridescent magnesitic berylium.

    The Weapon Shops of Isher Van Vogt, A. E. 1951

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