🐓 A rooster's crest 🤡 A fool's cap 🌺 A bright flower 🕺 A show-off man

cockscomb

9.9

A garden plant with bright crested flowers like a rooster's comb

noun
/ˈkɑksˌkoʊm/

Specialized

: cresta de gallo

Sisemore wraps a golden wreath of sunflowers around fiery brushes of cockscomb in front of his stand on the Fayetteville square.
red cockscomb
Celosia cockscomb

Examples

After he passed, she wrote his name in the dirt, spat on it, and circled it nine times walking backwards, holding on to that cockscomb.

Fiction book (1993)
The larger, well-known red cockscomb is an eye-catcher with its burgundy color and a height of up to six feet.
Revving up the color scheme are the fiercely red, cockscomb-shaped flowers of celosia and the tassel-like seed heads of Burgundy Splendor amaranth.

Synonyms

Celosia cristata

vscockscomb

Specialized

9.9

A garden flower with bright, feathery red or yellow spikes

is the everyday common name used for the same plant

common cockscomb

vscockscomb

7.7

A garden plant with bright red or yellow feathery flower spikes

is the broader species name used for the plant in general

Celosia argentea cristata

vscockscomb

Specialized

9.9

A garden plant with bright, feathery flower spikes in red or yellow

is the common garden term for the same decorative flowering plant

Compounds

common cockscomb

7.7

A garden plant with bright red or yellow feathery flower spikes

Surface Forms

cockscomb singular

cockscombs plural

Morphology

cockscomb = cock + comb (semi-transparent) = cock + comb

The plant name derives from the flowers' resemblance to a rooster's comb; the relation is shape-based and somewhat metaphorical.

Etymology

Cockscomb is used for a garden flower because the plant's wavy, crested bloom looks like a rooster's cock 'rooster' comb 'crest'. That's why gardeners call the bright, crested flower a cockscomb.