Definitions

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

  • noun A small, sweet-smelling herb, Galium odoratum, once used for flavouring wine

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word woodroof.

Examples

  • Sweet woodroof, again, grew in wild, woodland places where the soil was fine and the air delicate: the poor children used to go and gather it for her up in the woods on the higher lands; and for this service she always rewarded them with bright new pennies, of which my lord, her son, used to send her down a bagful fresh from the Mint in London every February.

    My Lady Ludlow Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • For lasting vegetable odours she preferred lavender and sweet-woodroof to any extract whatever.

    My Lady Ludlow Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • The wild geranium was already showing its pink stem and scarlet-edged leaves, themselves almost gorgeous enough to pass for flowers; the periwinkle, with its wreaths of shining foliage, was hanging in garlands over the precipitous descent; and the lily of the valley, the fragrant woodroof, and the silvery wild garlick, were just peeping from the earth in the most sheltered nooks.

    The Ground-Ash Mary Russell Mitford 1821

  • a beech-wood that had just put on its first green, where the woodroof [*] at their feet sent forth its fragrance, and the pale-red anemony looked so pretty among the verdure.

    Andersen's Fairy Tales 1840

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.