Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A fern (Dryopteris filix-mas) of Eurasia and North America, having stalks with brown scales and containing an oleoresin formerly used to expel tapeworms.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The dried rhizome of Dry-opteris Filix-mas of Schott, or of Dryopteris marginalis of Gray, used as an anthelmintic.
- noun An elegant fern, Aspidium Filix-mas (Nephrodium Filix-mas of Richard; Lastrea Filix-mas of Presl), with the fronds growing in a crown, found in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
- noun See cut under
fern .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A fern of North America and Europe (
Dryopteris filix-mas ) whose rhizomes and stalks yield an oleoresin used to expel tapeworms. It is a member of the woodfern genus.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any
fern in the Dryopterisgenus .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun fern of North America and Europe whose rhizomes and stalks yield an oleoresin used to expel tapeworms
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Ultimately from a translation of Latin mās, male (used by Pliny the Elder to describe a variety of this fern, in reference to its robustness and in contrast to a more delicate fern that he calls nymphaea filix, literally, nymph fern).]
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Examples
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