| / English Dictionary |
IVY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Old World vine with lobed evergreen leaves and black berrylike fruits
Synonyms:
common ivy; English ivy; Hedera helix; ivy
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("ivy" is a kind of...):
vine (a plant with a weak stem that derives support from climbing, twining, or creeping along a surface)
Holonyms ("ivy" is a member of...):
genus Hedera; Hedera (Old World woody vines)
Context examples:
His window was open, and there is a stout ivy plant leading to the ground.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a rustic seat.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The farmhouses were my delight, with thatched roofs, ivy up to the eaves, latticed windows, and stout women with rosy children at the doors.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Scientists have genetically modified a common houseplant called pothos ivy or devil’s ivy that can remove chloroform and benzene from the air around it.
(Common Houseplant with Genetic Modification Can Remove Polluted Air, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
In his case a trailer of ivy had given way under his weight, and we saw by the light of a lantern the mark on the lawn where his heels had come down.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
“You start me on my investigation with a very serious handicap. It is inconceivable, for example, that this ivy and this lawn would have yielded nothing to an expert observer.”
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the summit.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The central part was evidently of a great age and shrouded in ivy, but the large windows showed that modern changes had been carried out, and one wing of the house appeared to be entirely new.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of wren's nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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