Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various North American plants of the genus Phlox, having opposite leaves and flowers with a variously colored salverform corolla.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A genus of ornamental gamopetalous plants of the order Polemoniaceæ, characterized by a deeply three-valved loculicidal capsule, included stamens unequally inserted on the tube of a salver-shaped corolla, and entire leaves.
  • noun [lowercase] Any plant of this genus.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A genus of American herbs, having showy red, white, or purple flowers.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the larva of an American moth (Heliothis phloxiphaga). It is destructive to phloxes.
  • noun the moss pink. See under Moss.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any flowering plant of the genus Phlox.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any polemoniaceous plant of the genus Phlox; chiefly North American; cultivated for their clusters of flowers

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin, a kind of flame-colored flower, from Greek, flame, wallflower; see bhel- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • "A phlox on both your houses!!"

    oh, wait....

    February 11, 2007

  • My college roommate always said he wanted to name his first son Phlox. He was inspired by Phlox Road, which our school was near, his first discovery of the word. I really hope he doesn't follow through with that.

    February 11, 2007

  • Yeah, a boy named Phlox would certainly make it onto my list of unfortunate names.

    February 12, 2007

  • a town in Wisconsin, USA

    February 26, 2008