cream violet
- noun
- US
- Wild cream violets bloom in shaded woodlands each spring.
Examples
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She pressed a cream violet between the pages of her notebook to preserve its delicate beauty.
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The garden featured a rare cream violet among the more common purple varieties.
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The cream violet blooms beautifully in spring.
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I planted a cream violet in my garden.
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The garden featured a rare cream violet among the more common purple varieties.
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Wild cream violets bloom in shaded woodlands each spring.
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I planted a cream violet in my garden.
Synonyms
A leafy plant with white or cream flowers faintly marked with purple
A small leafy plant with cream or white flowers faintly marked with purple
A small wild violet that grows in eastern North America with pale white flowers lightly marked with purple
Surface Forms
Morphology
cream + violet
The phrase is a straightforward color + noun combination: 'cream' (a pale yellowish/white color) modifying 'violet' (the flower), so the compound denotes a violet that is cream-colored. This compositional, cross-linguistically common pattern makes the meaning directly inferable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Cream violet comes from the plant's pale, creamy flowers. The parts cream and violet are literal: cream for the colour and violet for the kind of flower, so the name means 'a violet with cream-coloured blooms'.