WEEPING WILLOW • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Weeping willow

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/wˈipɪŋ wˈɪlˌoʊ/ Listen

noun

Weeping willow n. (Bot.) A tree (Salix babylonica) of the willow family with slender leaves, native to China, whose branches grow very long and slender, and hang down almost perpendicularly. It grows best where soil is moist, as by the banks of streams and is widely cultivated as an ornamental tree.

Synonyms: Babylonian weeping willow.

Willow n.

1.

(Bot.) Any tree or shrub of the genus Salix, including many species, most of which are characterized often used as an emblem of sorrow, desolation, or desertion. "A wreath of willow to show my forsaken plight." Hence, a lover forsaken by, or having lost, the person beloved, is said to wear the willow. "And I must wear the willow garland For him that's dead or false to me."

2.

(Textile Manuf.) A machine in which cotton or wool is opened and cleansed by the action of long spikes projecting from a drum which revolves within a box studded with similar spikes; probably so called from having been originally a cylindrical cage made of willow rods, though some derive the term from winnow, as denoting the winnowing, or cleansing, action of the machine. Called also willy, twilly, twilly devil, and devil.

Almond willow, Pussy willow, Weeping willow. (Bot.) See under Almond, Pussy, and Weeping.

Willow biter (Zool.) the blue tit. (Prov. Eng.)

Willow fly (Zool.), a greenish European stone fly (Chloroperla viridis); called also yellow Sally.

Willow gall (Zool.), a conical, scaly gall produced on willows by the larva of a small dipterous fly (Cecidomyia strobiloides).

Willow grouse (Zool.), the white ptarmigan. See ptarmigan.

Willow lark (Zool.), the sedge warbler. (Prov. Eng.)

Willow ptarmigan (Zool.)

(a)

The European reed bunting, or black-headed bunting. See under Reed.

(b)

A sparrow (Passer salicicolus) native of Asia, Africa, and Southern Europe.

Willow tea, the prepared leaves of a species of willow largely grown in the neighborhood of Shanghai, extensively used by the poorer classes of Chinese as a substitute for tea.

Willow thrush (Zool.), a variety of the veery, or Wilson's thrush. See Veery.

Willow warbler (Zool.), a very small European warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus); called also bee bird, haybird, golden wren, pettychaps, sweet William, Tom Thumb, and willow wren.

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Etymology of 'Weeping willow'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Weeping willow" Quotes from Famous Books

... resembling the European umbrella-pine.] which also bears a seed agreeable to the taste, and which, from the color of its foliage and the beautiful form of its dome-like crown, is among the most elegant of trees, the white birch of Central Europe, with its pendulous branches almost rivalling those of the weeping willow in length, flexibility, and gracefulness of fall, and, especially, the "cypresse funerall," might be introduced into the United States with great advantage to the landscape. The European beech and chestnut furnish timber of far better quality than that of their American congeners. The fruit ...

— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... who were left behind. It was easy to divine, and I afterwards learned this to be the case, that it was the mother, Mrs. Curr, who came every morning to pay this tribute of affection to the departed. A weeping willow drooped its supple branches over the tomb; some honey-suckle and sweet-briar surrounded it, loading the air with their rich fragrance; not even the chirping of a bird disturbed the solemn silence that reigned ...

— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... the tourist a tombstone that has no other claim to distinction than a surprising feature of the epitaph. This tallish slab of marble stands not far from the northeast corner of the burying ground. It is decorated at the top with the conventionally chiseled outlines of urn and weeping willow, and bears an inscription in memory of "Mrs. Susannah, the wife of Mr. Peter Ensign, who died July 18, 1825, aged 54 years," and whose praises are sung in some verses that begin with this ...

— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... inaugurate a delightful country house. It is an opportunity that the Deschars have seized upon, the folly of a man of letters, a charming villa upon which he lavished one hundred thousand francs and which has been sold at auction for eleven thousand. Caroline has a new dress to air, or a hat with a weeping willow plume—things which a tilbury will set off to a charm. Little Charles is left with his grandmother. The servants have a holiday. The youthful pair start beneath the smile of a blue sky, flecked with milk-while clouds merely to heighten the effect. They breathe the ...

— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... intricate way among chairs and little tables and palms, toward a corner where a young woman in black crape sat on a pink sofa. Her hat was very large, and a palm with enormous fan-leaves drooped above it like a sympathetic weeping willow on a mourning brooch. But under the hat was ...

— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

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