Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A cosmopolitan aquatic herb (Hippuris vulgaris) having inconspicuous flowers and linear whorled leaves on erect unbranched stems.
- noun A long narrow cirrus cloud with a flowing appearance.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A plant of the genus Hippuris: most properly H. vulgaris.
- noun The horsetail, Equisetum. See
bottle-brush , 2. - noun plural Long straight fibers of gray cirrus cloud, an indication of the approach of stormy weather.
- noun In anatomy, the cauda equina (which see, under
cauda ). - Like a mare's tail; of the kind called mare's-tails: said of clouds.
- noun The horseweed, Leptilon Canadense.
- noun The heath-aster, Aster ericoides.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A long streaky cloud, spreading out like a horse's tail, and believed to indicate rain; a cirrus cloud. See
cloud . - noun (Bot.) An aquatic plant of the genus Hippuris (
Hippuris vulgaris ), having narrow leaves in whorls.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a long narrow flowing cirrus cloud
Etymologies
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Examples
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Among aquatic plants, mare's-tail Hippuris vulgaris is frequent along the shores of many ponds, smaller lakes and slow flowing streams.
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The blazing sun of early morning was gone; muted by high mare's-tail clouds with lower, puffier clouds moving in on the wind.
The Gates Of Sleep Lackey, Mercedes 2002
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There is a disembodied skylark voice somewhere high up in the mare's-tail clouds which veil the earth from too much heat and brightness; and the young heart is unhardened and unspotted from the world.
Despair's Last Journey David Christie Murray
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Long, dappled mare's-tail clouds stretched across the pale November sky, and every now and then the sun shone out between them.
A harum-scarum schoolgirl Angela Brazil 1907
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I sat at the entrance of my gipsy-like hut, anxiously watching the weather, and absorbed in admiration of the moonrise, from which my thoughts were soon diverted by its fading light as it entered a dense mass of mare's-tail cirrus.
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