black felt cup
- noun
- UK
:
copa de fieltro negro
- Mycologists are excited to find a rare black felt cup growing on decaying wood.
Examples
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The black felt cup is often found in damp forests during early spring.
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He photographed a cluster of black felt cups along the shaded forest path.
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Look at that black felt cup over there!
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I found a black felt cup in the forest.
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Mycologists are excited to find a rare black felt cup growing on decaying wood.
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The black felt cup is often found in damp forests during early spring.
-
He photographed a cluster of black felt cups along the shaded forest path.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The constituents 'black' and 'cup' transparently convey a black, cup-shaped object, but 'felt' is ambiguous: a B1 learner will most likely interpret it as the textile (a cup made of felt) rather than the specialized botanical sense 'felt-like' describing surface texture. Because the phrase is a rare, technical name for a fungus and requires domain knowledge or reanalysis of 'felt', the overall meaning is only partially predictable from the parts.
Etymology
The noun black felt cup likely comes from how the fungus looks: a small, dark black cup with a soft, fuzzy felt surface, so people called it a cup. That's why black felt cup now refers to a tiny cup-shaped fungus with a felt-like texture.
