ragged robin

1 8.3

A flowering plant with pink, frilly petals that grows in damp meadows

noun

: flor de ruiseñor

During our nature walk, we spotted a cluster of ragged robin among the tall grasses.

Examples

I love watching the bees hover around the delicate petals of the ragged robin in spring.
If you put your hand to it, you could feel the fine, papery flowers of the alfalfa, so purple when it was cut, and he imagined sometimes that he could smell that purple flower in it, or the pink ragged robin that had crept into the grasses in the wet corner of the meadow, for the one made good hay, and the other did not.

Fiction book (1995)
In the garden, the ragged robin blooms with its unique, deeply divided pink flowers.

Synonyms

Lychnis flos-cuculi

vsragged robin

Specialized

9.9

A common plant with bright pink ragged petals that grows in wet fields

is the everyday common name for the same perennial plant

Surface Forms

ragged robin singular

ragged robins plural

Morphology

ragged + robin

Although 'ragged' describes an irregular, torn appearance and 'robin' is a bird name, the compound 'ragged robin' is a lexicalized plant name whose meaning ('a perennial flower with ragged-edged petals') is not predictable from the constituents; a B1 learner knowing the words would more likely infer a scruffy bird than a specific plant. Common names for plants are language- and culture-specific, so the referential shift makes this expression non-compositional and opaque to learners.

Etymology

Ragged robin gets its name from the plant's frilly, torn-looking petals that look ragged. The word robin is an old friendly name people often added to plants, so the full name points to this 'flower' with ragged, pink blooms.