wild sage
- noun
- /waɪld seɪdʒ/
:
salvia silvestre
- In the summer, wild sage can be seen growing abundantly in the fields near the river.
- smell of wild sage
Examples
-
She caught a scent of wet bark: poplar, dogwood, rotting leaves, a trace of wild sage.
Fiction book (1999) -
As we hiked along the trail, we noticed many patches of wild sage blooming among the rocks.
-
The garden was filled with the fragrant aroma of wild sage and other herbs.
Synonyms
A sage plant from Europe and Asia with blue flowers and verbena-like leaves
A plant with blue flowers and leaves like verbena
A plant with blue flowers often grown or found in fields and gardens and used as an herb
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase is compositionally built: 'wild' (growing naturally) modifies 'sage' (the herb), so the meaning 'sage that grows in the wild / wild-growing species of sage' is directly inferable from the parts. This is a common, cross-linguistic adjectival + noun pattern and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
Wild sage gets its name from a simple picture: a sage plant growing untamed in nature, because wild means 'not planted' and sage is an 'aromatic herb' people used for cooking and medicine. That's why wild sage means the sage plants that grow naturally in fields and by the roadside.
