Virginia stock
- noun
:
malcolmia de Virginia
- He grew Virginia stock along the path for their sweet fragrance and colorful display.
Examples
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The Virginia stock in her garden bloomed profusely throughout the spring.
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I planted some Virginia stock in my garden last spring.
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Virginia stock is easy to grow from seed and attracts bees to the garden.
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The Virginia stocks bloom beautifully in the summer.
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Virginia stock is easy to grow from seed and attracts bees to the garden.
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He grew Virginia stock along the path for their sweet fragrance and colorful display.
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The Virginia stock in her garden bloomed profusely throughout the spring.
Synonyms
A small seaside flowering plant with fragrant groups of pink, white, red or lilac flowers
A garden flower that lives for one year with sweet smelling clusters of small pink, white, red or lilac blooms
A small flowering plant grown for its pretty, often fragrant flowers
Surface Forms
Morphology
Virginia + stock
The compound is compositional: 'stock' is a garden flower and 'Virginia' functions as a place/type modifier, so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a kind of stock (ornamental plant) associated with Virginia. This place+plant naming pattern is common cross-linguistically, so the basic meaning is predictable even if specific botanical details are not.
Etymology
Virginia stock may have been named when gardeners sent its seeds long ago to Virginia, so people began to call the sweet-smelling garden flower 'Virginia stock'. The word stock was a common name for garden plants that grow from a short stem, so the name helps you remember it is a fragrant garden flower.
