violet

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A plant or flower of the genus Viola, especially the fragrant Viola odorata; (inexact) similar-looking plants and flowers.

   Refreshed by their cooling bath of evening dew, the violets and other nocturnal flowers emitted a pleasant fragrance over the fields, but from the bogs and the rivulets came up now and then damp, penetrating gusts, that sent an icy chill through me.

2. 2
   noun

   A person thought to resemble V. odorata, especially in its beauty and delicacy.

   ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘you are looking at a crushed violet, a spent egg, a squeezed tube.’

3. 3
   name

   A female given name from English.

   It may be as well to say, by way of parenthesis, that her real name was Violante,―at least, such was the name by which her mother had her christened. But her father thought it much too long, and said it was better to call her Violet.

4. 4
   adj

   of a color intermediate between red and blue

5. 5
   noun

   a variable color that lies beyond blue in the spectrum

6. 6
   noun

   any of numerous low-growing violas with small flowers

7. 7
   noun

   The color of most violets; the colour evoked by the shortest visible wavelengths between 380 and 435 nm, an additive tertiary colour.

8. 8
   noun

   Clothes and (ecclesiastical) vestments of such a colour.

Etymology

Etymology tree Latin viola Old French -ette Old French violettebor. Middle English violet English violet Inherited from Middle English violet, vyolet, vyolette, from Old French violette, from Latin viola (“violet”) + -ette. Cognate with Lithuanian violetinė (“purple, violet”) and Spanish violeta (“purple, violet”).