WILLOW • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Willow

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/wˈɪlˌoʊ/ Listen

noun

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.

verb

Willow v. t. To open and cleanse, as cotton, flax, or wool, by means of a willow. See Willow, n., 2.

See images of 'Willow'

Etymology of 'Willow'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Willow" Quotes from Famous Books

... sedgey side, and in the meads Where Isis in her calm clear stream reflects The willow's bending boughs, at earliest dawn In the noon-tide hour, and when the night-mists rose, I have remembered you: and when the noise Of loud intemperance on my lonely ear Burst with loud tumult, as recluse I sat, Pondering on loftiest ...

— Poems • Robert Southey

... which she had made out of an old dress; and Silvere was then obliged to go back to aunt Dide's for his bathing drawers. Their proceedings were characterised by great simplicity. Miette disrobed herself beneath the shade of a stout willow; and when both were ready, enveloped in the blackness which fell from the foliage around them, they gaily entered the cool water, oblivious of all previous scruples, and knowing in their innocence no sense of shame. They remained in the river quite an hour, splashing ...

— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... couch. On the second day, under guidance of his host, Rolf set about making his own bed. Two logs, each four inches thick and three feet long, were cut. Then two strong poles, each six feet long, were laid into notches at the ends of the short logs. About seventy-five straight sticks of willow were cut and woven with willow bark into a lattice, three feet wide and six feet long. This, laid on the poles, furnished a spring mattress, on which a couple of blankets made a most comfortable couch, dry, warm, and off the ground. In addition to the lodge cover, ...

— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... in Boston comes out a little earlier perhaps, than our own, but the difference is slight. It holds its leaves long after our elms are bare. It grows upward, with abundant dark foliage, while ours spreads, sometimes a hundred and twenty feet, and often droops like a weeping willow. The English elm looks like a much more robust tree than ours, yet they tell me it is very fragile, and that its limbs are constantly breaking off in high winds, just as happens with our native elms. Ours is not a very long-lived tree; between two and ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... informed by Mr. Henry M. Zollickoffer of Philadelphia, a very intelligent and reliable observer, that he knew a swarm to settle on a willow tree in that city, in a lot owned by the Pennsylvania Hospital; it remained there for sometime, and the boys pelted it with stones, to get possession ...

— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

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