California beauty
- noun
- US
:
belleza de California
- The California beauty adds a splash of color to many gardens in the region.
Examples
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The California beauty bloomed beautifully in the garden.
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We planted a California beauty by the porch for its vibrant flowers and attractive leaves.
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Botanists admire the striking yellow blossoms of the California beauty.
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I saw a stunning California beauty at the nursery.
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The garden was filled with vibrant California beauty shrubs, their yellow flowers attracting many bees.
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In spring, the California beauty blooms brightly, brightening up the landscape with its stunning yellow petals.
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She planted California beauty in her backyard to enjoy its lovely flowers throughout the year.
Synonyms
An evergreen shrub with soft hairy leaves and bright yellow flowers
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally interpretable as "a beauty associated with California," so a B1 learner who knows both words would likely infer it denotes something/someone notable or attractive from California. However, the specific, lexicalized sense referring to a particular evergreen shrub is not predictable from the constituents alone and requires world/lexical knowledge, making the expression only partially transparent.
Etymology
California beauty comes from a simple picture: a pretty shrub with bright yellow flowers from California. People called it California because it grows there and beauty because of its lovely flowers, so the name now means 'a good-looking plant that keeps its leaves all year and has bright yellow flowers'.
