Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or serving as an ornament or decoration.
- noun Something that serves as ornamentation, especially a plant grown for its beauty.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Specifically, a plant or vine which is grown only for the beauty of its flowers or foliage.
- Of the nature of an ornament; serving as an ornament; of or pertaining to ornament or decoration; adding or lending beauty, grace, or attractiveness: as, ornamental appendages; neither useful nor ornamental.
- noun An accessory; an embellishment; an adornment.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Serving to ornament; characterized by ornament; beautifying; embellishing.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Serving to
ornament ; characterized by ornament; beautifying; embellishing. - noun An ornamental
plant .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any plant grown for its beauty or ornamental value
- adjective serving an esthetic rather than a useful purpose
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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The project, organized by a company called GEOS, will specialize in ornamental plants and cut flowers.
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The project, organized by a company called GEOS, will specialize in ornamental plants and cut flowers.
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There, too, the turbulence and flow of capitalism is treated in ornamental poetry which exploits it in different ways, hyperbolically overdeveloping it like Keats in The Eve of St Agnes or showing its contiguity with sensations of contagion, corruption and violence, as in anti-slavery poetry.
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The neatness and completeness of everything; the due allowance of trees dispersed in ornamental fashion; nature so thoroughly tamed and domesticated; the picturesque railway stations, and a certain moist softness in the air.
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In the top right is a picture of an ornamental box with the English words, Happy New Year
Brudirect News1 2009
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Along with the main ornamental flowers, the fillers like BabyÂ’s Breath, foliage and ribbon have completed and enhanced the giving of flowers.
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In those places where the gentry were attached to the Stuart cause, their houses seemed dismantled or deserted, the usual course of what may be called ornamental labour was totally interrupted, and the inhabitants were seen gliding about, with fear, sorrow, and dejection on their faces.
Waverley 2004
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All those works are of that kind called ornamental: the graces of true art, the truth of action and the dignity of sentiment are wanting; and they seem to have been produced by a sort of mechanical process, similar to that which creates figures in arras.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 382, July 25, 1829 Various
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On the other hand, this looseness of arrangement, and what may be termed ornamental, not only spread through Germany, but infected the schools of Venice; witness the works of Tintoret and Paul Veronese, in which the expression of the countenance absolutely goes for nothing, and the whole arrangement is drawn out in a picturesque point of view, merely to amuse and gratify the eye of the spectator.
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The furniture of the club room could hardly be called ornamental, but it was certainly comfortable.
Glenloch Girls Grace M. Remick
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