mignonette

English

Alternative forms

Etymology
A botanical illustration of the mignonette (Reseda odorata; sense 1)[1]

From French mignonnette, from mignon (“dainty”) + -ette (“diminutive suffix”).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˌmɪnjəˈnɛt/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛt
  • Hyphenation: mig‧non‧ette

Noun

mignonette (plural mignonettes)

  1. A plant, Reseda odorata, having greyish-green flowers with orange-coloured stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb. [from early 18th c.]
    • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 2:
      After amusing herself for a brief time with picking to pieces some mignonette which filled a box on the window-sill, Marie threw the flowers from her, and exclaimed,—"And here we are seated together, as we used to talk away half the night in Italy. Good Heavens! how we are altered!"
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 43, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
      These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s window.
  2. A mignonette tree (Lawsonia inermis), source of the dye henna.
  3. A mignonette vine
  4. A greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.
    mignonette:  

Synonyms

Translations

Adjective

mignonette (comparative more mignonette, superlative most mignonette)

  1. Of a greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.
    • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 44:
      She wore a dishabille of mignonette-green silk and bead-diapered head-dress that added several inches to her height […].

Synonyms

See also

References
  1. Edward Step, cultural directions edited by William Watson (1896) Favourite Flowers of Garden and Greenhouse, London, New York, N.Y.: Frederick Warne & Co., →OCLC, plate 31 (facing page 67).

Further reading

French

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /mi.ɲɔ.nɛt/
  • Audio (Paris)(file)
  • Audio(file)

Noun

mignonette f (plural mignonettes)

  1. Alternative form of mignonnette

Anagrams
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