slender lady palm
- noun
- Specialized
:
palma dama delgada
- The slender lady palm is prized for its graceful appearance in indoor gardens.
Examples
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Unlike the more robust Rhapis excelsa, the slender lady palm has finer stems and leaves.
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The slender lady palm thrives in bright, indirect sunlight.
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She chose a slender lady palm to add elegance to the hotel lobby.
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I bought a slender lady palm for my living room.
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The slender lady palm is often used in offices for its elegant look and low maintenance requirements.
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In her garden, she planted a slender lady palm to enhance the tropical ambiance.
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Many homeowners prefer the slender lady palm because it adapts well to indoor environments.
Synonyms
A Chinese lady palm with slender stems and fine leaf coverings grown indoors for decoration
A small indoor plant with many thin, fan-shaped leaves
A group of small fan palm plants from China and Japan that grow in clumps
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a straightforward adjective + noun compound: 'slender' (thin) modifies 'lady palm' (a type of palm), so a learner who knows the constituent words can infer it denotes a slim variety of a lady palm. Even if the exact common-name 'lady palm' is unfamiliar, the compositional pattern and cross-linguistic tendency to form plant names this way make the basic meaning predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Slender lady palm gets its name from the plant's look: its thin, upright stems and fine leaves made people think of a graceful woman, so slender describes the thin shape and lady palm is the common name for these small palms. That's why the name means a 'plant species' with slender stems and finer fibers than other lady palms.
