Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various climbing vines, especially a European honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum) having yellowish flowers.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The common European honeysuckle, Lonicera Periclymenum, whence the name is more or less ex tended to other honeysuckles.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Local, U. S., Local, U. S. A climbing plant having flowers of great fragrance (
Lonicera Periclymenum ); the honeysuckle. - noun Local, U. S. The Virginia creeper. See Virginia creeper, under
Virginia .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of several unrelated climbing
vines , especially thehoneysuckle and the Virginia creeper
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun common North American vine with compound leaves and bluish-black berrylike fruit
- noun European twining honeysuckle with fragrant red and yellow-white flowers
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Curl inward here, sweet woodbine flow'r; — 'Companion of the lonely hour,
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If I were him I'd be keeping my head down woodbine
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The roses and woodbine planted around the door by her mother had formed a riotous, twining mat.
The Dressmaker Posie Graeme-Evans 2010
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Damask roses—scarlet and white, yellow and cream—had been brought in from the garden and made into long garlands twined with wild woodbine.
The Dressmaker Posie Graeme-Evans 2010
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If I were him I'd be keeping my head down woodbine
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Much that is called “woods” was about half as high as this, — only patches of shrub-oak, bayberry, beach-plum, and wild roses, overrun with woodbine.
2007 August : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation - Part 2 2007
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Much that is called “woods” was about half as high as this, — only patches of shrub-oak, bayberry, beach-plum, and wild roses, overrun with woodbine.
Postcard : Ange Mlinko : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007
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She retreated by a gate which, leading to the road, was overhung by some wild rocky scenery, in which appeared a sort of artificial aperture, but it was rendered almost inaccessible from the unrestrained woodbine which covered it, and appeared formerly to have been a sort of arbour.
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In the evening a walk was proposed; the path they took led to a rustic arbour, enclosed by bold rocky scenery, whose entrance was almost impeded by the profusion of woodbine which carelessly wantoned around it.
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Were these MP's about during the time of rationing they would be selling ladys nylons out of a suitcase of a street corner, woodbine in the corner of the mouth and keeping an eye out for Dixon of the yard.
Archive 2008-02-01 FIDO The Dog 2008
yarb commented on the word woodbine
A brand of cigarrette associated in the UK with days long gone, the days of empire, when smoking was good for you.
November 24, 2007
qroqqa commented on the word woodbine
Titania: Sleepe thou, and I will winde thee in my arms,
Fairies be gone, and be alwaies away.
So doth the woodbine, the sweet Honisuckle,
Gently entwist; the female Iuy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the Elme.
O how I loue thee! how I dote on thee!
—A Midsummer Night's Dream IV.i
When these were done, she took some needle-work from her basket, and sat herself down upon a stool beside the lattice, where the honeysuckle and woodbine entwined their tender stems, and stealing into the room filled it with their delicious breath.
—The Old Curiosity Shop ch. 25
The problem with both these passages is that normally woodbine is honeysuckle. Various emendations for the Shakespeare have been suggested. Woodbine could be a dialectal name for bindweed, or an error for its synonym 'weedbind' (less odorous so more unfortunate for Dickens). It could be 'woodrind', the bark of the tree (but that's not in the OED). Or the honeysuckle is the flowers of the woodbine.
More ingenious is if the woodbine and honeysuckle are in apposition, naming the same plant. Then the verb 'entwist' needs an object. Or perhaps it's used intransitively (though OED has no instances of this grammar). The object could be the elm, with 'the female ivy so enrings' bracketed off as a parenthesis. Most ingenious of all is if it originally said that the woodbine, the honeysuckle gently entwists the maple; the P being omitted by accident, male was changed to female: the ivy was considered female because it always required support. (This is William Warburton's suggestion.)
August 13, 2008
dailyword commented on the word woodbine
Tristan smoked a brand of cigarettes that had this name.
June 13, 2012