lavender

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See also: Lavender

English

Etymology

From Middle English lavendre, from Anglo-Norman lavendre (French lavande), from Medieval Latin lavendula, possibly from Latin lividus (“bluish”), but influenced by lavō (“wash”) due to use of lavender in washing clothes.

Pronunciation

Noun

lavender (countable and uncountable, plural lavenders)

  1. Any of a group of European plants, genus, Lavandula, of the mint family.
  2. A pale bluish purple colour, like that of the lavender flower.
    lavender:  
    web lavender:  
  3. (film, historical, uncountable) A kind of film stock for creating positive prints from negatives as part of the process of duplicating the negatives.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

Adjective

lavender (comparative more lavender, superlative most lavender)

  1. Having a pale purple colour.
  2. (politics) Pertaining to LGBT people and rights.
    • 1966, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York: Bantam Books, published 1976, →ISBN, page 81:
      “Now in here,” their guide, sweating dark tentacles into his tab collar, briefed them, “you are going to see the members of the third sex, the lavender crowd this city by the Bay is so justly famous for.
    • 1981 August 22, Nancy Walker, “Still Coming Out, After All These Years”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 6, page 11:
      My sother (significant other) and I have been together almost nineteen years. Exactly half of the usual wedding vows taken traditionally by non-lavender couples — for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, — have been characteristic of our relationship.
  3. (politics) Pertaining to lesbian feminism; opposing heterosexism. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

lavender (third-person singular simple present lavenders, present participle lavendering, simple past and past participle lavendered)

  1. (transitive) To decorate or perfume with lavender.
    • 1986, Katherine Gibson Fougera, With Custer's Cavalry, page 47:
      Short shafts of dying sunlight mingled with the deepening grey, lavendering the horizon, and all nature seemed to hush as though waiting to welcome the night.

Further reading

Anagrams

Middle English

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Old French lavandier, lavandiere, from Medieval Latin lavandārius.

Alternative forms

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /lavənˈdeːr/, /ˈlavəndər/, /lau̯nˈdeːr/, /ˈlau̯ndər/

Noun

lavender (plural lavenderes)

  1. A washer; one (especially a woman) who washes clothes.
  2. (euphemistic) A woman employed in prostitution or who has loose morals.
Related terms
Descendants
  • English: launder
  • Scots: launer
References

Etymology 2

Noun

lavender

  1. Alternative form of lavendre
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