Heliotrope

Quick meaning: Heliotrope is a noun meaning (uncountable) The fragrance of Heliotropium arborescens flowers, or a scent resembling this fragrance.

Meaning

(uncountable) The fragrance of Heliotropium arborescens flowers, or a scent resembling this fragrance.

More Meanings

1. (uncountable) A light purple or violet colour like that of Heliotropium arborescens flowers.
2. (countable, historical) An ancient type of sundial consisting of a bowl with a perpendicular gnomon mounted in the centre.
3. (countable, uncountable, mineralogy) Synonym of bloodstone (“a green chalcedony that is sprinkled with red spots or veins of hematite”).
4. Of a light purple or violet colour like that of Heliotropium arborescens flowers.
5. (countable, botany, also figuratively) A plant with flowers which turn to face and follow the sun, such as (archaic) marigolds and sunflowers.
6. (countable) An instrument that uses a mirror to reflect sunlight for purposes such as signalling, or (surveying) triangulation (where the reflected light is detected by another surveyor positioned some distance away).

Example Sentences

Cordials. […] Flovvers of Heliotrope, […]

Flovvers in Prime, or yet laſting. […] Star-vvort, Heliotrop, French Mary-gold, […]

He had lost his affable smile, and wore a look of almost military resolution; […] he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of gunpowder.

[S]till as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.

Word Forms

• heliotropes

Synonyms for heliotrope

Depending on context, synonyms include heliotropian, turnsole, sematrope, helio, bloodstone.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include bloodstone, purple, turnsole, diaheliotropism, heliophyte, apheliotropism.

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