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Glite Dictionary
sweet alyssum

sweet alyssum

8.4
A low garden plant with many small, sweet-smelling white flowers
  • noun
  • /swit əˈlɪsəm/
translation icon : aliso dulce
  • The sweet alyssum fills the air with a delightful scent, especially during the warm summer evenings.
  • white sweet alyssum

Examples

  • In my garden, the sweet alyssum blooms beautifully with its fragrant white flowers.

  • They turned up a flagstone walk bordered with sweet alyssum.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • I love to plant sweet alyssum along the paths because it attracts a lot of butterflies.

Synonyms

Lobularia maritima
vssweet alyssum
  • Specialized
9.8

A small garden plant with many tiny white, sweet-smelling flowers

is the common garden name rather than the scientific term
sweet alison
vssweet alyssum
  • UK
8.2

A low garden plant with clusters of small white sweet-smelling flowers

is native to the Mediterranean region rather than Europe

Surface Forms

sweet alyssum singular
sweet alyssums plural

Morphology

sweet + Alyssum

The meaning is directly derivable from 'sweet' (fragrant) modifying 'Alyssum' (a plant genus): it denotes a type of Alyssum with a sweet scent. This is a regular adjective + noun composition common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Sweet alyssum comes from two ideas: sweet for its pleasant smell and alyssum from an old word because people once thought the plant could help with 'madness' or 'rabies'. That story about healing, plus the flower's 'sweet' scent, is why the name now means the small, fragrant garden flower.