white lettuce
- noun
- Specialized
:
lechuga blanca
- Many gardeners admire white lettuce for its delicate drooping flowers.
Examples
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The meadow was dotted with white lettuce in bloom during late summer.
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I learned to identify white lettuce on my hike through the northeastern woods.
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I found some white lettuce at the farmer's market.
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The white lettuce blooms beautifully in the spring.
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I learned to identify white lettuce on my hike through the northeastern woods.
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Many gardeners admire white lettuce for its delicate drooping flowers.
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The meadow was dotted with white lettuce in bloom during late summer.
Synonyms
A herb with drooping white or pale yellow flowers that grows in northeastern North America
A wild plant with pale yellow flowers that hang in groups
A woodland plant from the northeastern United States and Canada with drooping yellowish-white flowers
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase is compositionally built from 'white' + 'lettuce', so a B1 learner who knows both words would naturally infer 'a lettuce that is white.' However, the listed sense is a specialized botanical name for a wild herb (not the common salad lettuce), so the precise referent and taxonomic meaning are not fully predictable from the parts without exposure.
Etymology
The plant name white lettuce probably comes from its pale, drooping flowers and soft leaves that made people think of a pale head of white lettuce, so because it looked 'white' and like 'lettuce', the name came to mean this small woodland plant.
