violet

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

• noun Any of various low-growing herbs of the genus Viola, having short-spurred, irregular flowers that are characteristically purplish-blue but sometimes yellow or white.
• noun Any of several similar plants, such as an African violet.
• noun The hue of the short-wave end of the visible spectrum, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 380 to 420 nanometers; any of a group of colors, reddish-blue in hue, that may vary in lightness and saturation.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A plant of the genus Viola, or one of its flowers; also, one of a few plants of other genera. See Viola, compound names below, and cut in next column.
• noun A general class of colors, of which the violetflower is a highly chromatic example.
• noun Any one of the many different small blue or violet butterflies of Lycæna, Polyommatus, and allied genera.
• noun Locally, same as bog-violet.
• Having the color of violet, a deep blue tinged with red.
• noun A viola d'amore. Sometimes called English violet.

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

• adjective Dark blue, inclining to red; bluish purple; having a color produced by red and blue combined.
• adjective (Zoöl.) any species of Ianthina; -- called also violet snail. See Ianthina.
• adjective a name given to several kinds of hard purplish or reddish woods, as king wood, myall wood, and the wood of the Andira violacea, a tree of Guiana.
• noun (Bot.) Any plant or flower of the genus Viola, of many species. The violets are generally low, herbaceous plants, and the flowers of many of the species are blue, while others are white or yellow, or of several colors, as the pansy (Viola tricolor).
• noun The color of a violet, or that part of the spectrum farthest from red. It is the most refrangible part of the spectrum.
• noun In art, a color produced by a combination of red and blue in equal proportions; a bluish purple color.
• noun (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of small violet-colored butterflies belonging to Lycæna, or Rusticus, and allied genera.
• noun See under Corn.
• noun (Bot.) See Damewort.
• noun (Bot.) See under Dogtooth.
• noun (Bot.) an aquatic European herb (Hottonia palustris) with pale purplish flowers and pinnatifid leaves.

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

• noun A bluish-purple colour.
• noun Viola, a genus of fragrant plants with white, purple or yellow flowers.
• noun Any of several plants that look like the plants of the genus Viola but are taxonomically unrelated to them.
• adjective Having a bluish-purple colour.

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

• noun a variable color that lies beyond blue in the spectrum
• noun any of numerous low-growing violas with small flowers
• adjective of a color intermediate between red and blue