English rose
1
7.4
- noun
- UK
:
rosa inglesa
- In the painting, the woman depicted is a classic English rose, radiating beauty and elegance.
- a pale English rose
Examples
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Every one an English rose.
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After being abroad so long... ...it's a privilege to meet a true English rose.
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"A memory of his own grand wedding, to his beloved English rose, Georgiana, held in London because of the antipathy between Rafael and his father, filled his mind with color and pain.
Fiction book (1994) -
She is often described as an English rose due to her fair skin and delicate features.
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The actress perfectly embodies the image of an English rose with her graceful demeanor.
Surface Forms
Morphology
English + rose
The phrase is a straightforward adjectival modification: 'English' (from England) + 'rose' (a flower commonly used as a metaphor for beauty) yields the image of a woman likened to a rose from England. This metaphorical but highly predictable composition (adj + noun denoting a feminine beauty stereotype) is cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
English rose comes from the image of a pale, delicate rose in an English garden, a flower thought to be gentle and pretty. That's why the phrase is used for 'a woman regarded as a classic example of English beauty', someone with fair skin and soft, gentle features.