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''lavender'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''lavender'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260127004310-00-⌔

lavender - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

lavender (countable and uncountable, plural lavenders)

  • Any of a group of European plants, genus, Lavandula, of the mint family.
  • A pale bluish purple colour, like that of the lavender flower.
    • ✤ lavender:
    • ✤ web lavender:
  • (film, historical, uncountable) A kind of film stock used for creating positive prints from negatives as part of the process of duplicating the negatives.

Adjective

lavender (comparative more lavender, superlative most lavender)

  • Having a pale purple colour.
  • (originally US) Pertaining to LGBT people and rights.
    • ✤ “Now in here,” their guide, sweating dark tentacles into his tab collar, briefed them, “you are going to see the members of the third sex, the lavender crowd this city by the Bay is so justly famous for.1
    • ✤ My sother (significant other) and I have been together almost nineteen years. Exactly half of the usual wedding vows taken traditionally by non- lavender couples — for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, — have been characteristic of our relationship.2
  • (politics) Pertaining to lesbian feminism; opposing heterosexism.

Verb

lavender (third-person singular simple present lavenders, present participle lavendering, simple past and past participle lavendered)

  • (transitive) To decorate or perfume with lavender.
    • ✤ Short shafts of dying sunlight mingled with the deepening grey, lavendering the horizon, and all nature seemed to hush as though waiting to welcome the night.3

Etymology

From Middle English lavendre, from Anglo-Norman lavendre (French lavande), from Medieval Latin lavendula, possibly from Latin lividus (“bluish”), but influenced by lavō (“to wash”) due to the use of lavender in washing clothes.

Pronunciation

  • (non-rhotic)
    • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈlæv.ən.dəː/, [ˈlæv.ən.dəː] ~ [ˈlæv.n̩.dəː]
      • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (rhotic)
    • (General American) IPA: /ˈlæv.ən.dɚ/, [ˈlæv.ən.dɚ] ~ [ˈlæv.n̩.dɹ̩]
  • Rhymes: -ævəndə(ɹ)
  • Hyphenation: lav‧en‧der

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 81: ↩

  2. 1981 August 22, Nancy Walker, “Still Coming Out, After All These Years”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 6, page 11: ↩

  3. 1986, Katherine Gibson Fougera, With Custer’s Cavalry, page 47: ↩

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Secondary

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