maidenhair fern
- noun
- /ˈmeɪdənˌhɛr fɜrn/
:
helecho de pelo de virgen
- maidenhair fern (Adiantum)
Examples
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"She was painting a watercolor of the light as it dripped through a maidenhair fern in the window.
Fiction book (1993) -
Likewise, at a glance, he could differentiate maidenhair fern from oak fern or bracken, or lichen from moss.
Fiction book (2002) -
In the shady corner of the garden, the maidenhair fern flourishes alongside the stream.
-
The delicate, feathery leaves of the maidenhair fern create a beautiful contrast against the rocks.
-
In her living room, she keeps a maidenhair fern that adds a touch of elegance to the space.
Synonyms
1
9.1
A small fern with thin, delicate leaves that look like hair
A group of small ferns with delicate, fan-shaped leaves often called maidenhair ferns
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound names 'maidenhair' (denoting hair-like, lacy fronds) + 'fern' straightforwardly yield a type of fern characterized by delicate fronds; a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer it is a fern with hair-like fronds. Plant-naming by descriptive constituents is cross-linguistically common, so the meaning is directly derivable from the parts.
Etymology
Maidenhair fern gets its name from how the plant looks. One popular story says its thin dark stems and many small leaves looked like a young woman's soft 'hair', so maiden (meaning 'young woman') and hair were used to name this delicate fern.