Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various plants of the genus Anagallis, having opposite leaves and flowers with a five-lobed calyx, especially the scarlet pimpernel.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The garden-burnet, Poterium Sanguisorba.
  • noun The burnet-saxifrage, Pimpinella Saxifraga.
  • noun The selfheal, Brunella vulgaris.
  • noun A plant, Anagallis arvensis, of the primrose family, sometimes distinguished as red or scarlet pimpernel, a native of the northern Old World and introduced into the United States and elsewhere.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A plant of the genus Anagallis, of which one species (Anagallis arvensis) has small flowers, usually scarlet, but sometimes purple, blue, or white, which speedily close at the approach of bad weather.
  • noun (Bot.) See Brookweed.

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

  • noun European garden herb with purple-tinged flowers and leaves that are sometimes used for salads
  • noun any of several plants of the genus Anagallis

Etymologies

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

[Middle English pimpernelle, from Old French, alteration of piprenelle, from Late Latin pimpinella, perhaps from Latin piper, pepper; see pepper.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman pimpernele et al., Middle French pimpinelle ("burnet saxifrage") et al., from Late Latin pipinella, of disputed origin.

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