tulip bed
- noun
- /ˈtuːlɪp bɛd/
:
parterre de tulipanes
Examples
-
Her ancient and stooped downstairs landlord no longer had a lawn, as he had converted the entire yard to tulip beds.
Fiction book (1995) -
There are two bomb shelters beneath the forsythias and tulip beds, two concrete bunkers hidden gracelessly beneath the earth.
Fiction book (1995) -
He liked the walking, the tulip beds in spring, the tall stalks of summer, grass that stained the hems of his pants, proof of his participation.
Fiction book (1993) -
The garden's tulip beds were blooming beautifully in the spring sunshine.
-
She arranged her tulip beds in a colorful pattern to attract more visitors to her garden.
-
After planting the tulips, he carefully mulched the tulip beds to keep the soil moist.
Synonyms
118
1.0
A plot of ground where flowers or other plants grow
14
1.0
A part of a garden where people plant flowers
5
1.0
A piece of ground in a garden for growing flowers
1
1.0
An area of ground in a garden where people plant and grow flowers
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a plot of ground for growing tulips' is directly and compositionally derived from 'tulip' (the flower) + 'bed' (a garden plot). This is a commonplace noun-noun combination following productive English compounding, and similar constructions exist in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Tulip bed comes from gardeners' language: they call a prepared patch of soil a bed, and a patch planted with tulip flowers became a tulip bed. So, it means 'a section of ground prepared for growing tulips'.