HOLLY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Holly

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/hˈɑli/ Listen

noun

Holly n.

(Bot.) A tree or shrub of the genus Ilex. The European species (Ilex Aquifolium) is best known, having glossy green leaves, with a spiny, waved edge, and bearing berries that turn red or yellow about Michaelmas. Note: The holly is much used to adorn churches and houses, at Christmas time, and hence is associated with scenes of good will and rejoicing. It is an evergreen tree, and has a finegrained, heavy, white wood. Its bark is used as a febrifuge, and the berries are violently purgative and emetic. The American holly is the Ilex opaca, and is found along the coast of the United States, from Maine southward.

(Bot.) The holm oak. See 1st Holm.

Holly-leaved oak (Bot.), the black scrub oak. See Scrub oak.

Holly rose (Bot.), a West Indian shrub, with showy, yellow flowers (Turnera ulmifolia).

Sea holly (Bot.), a species of Eryngium. See Eryngium.

adverb

Holly adv. Wholly. (Obs.)

See images of 'Holly'

Etymology of 'Holly'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Holly" Quotes from Famous Books

... spent in Bolingbroke was a very pleasant one, with a little under current of vague pain and dissatisfaction running through it whenever she thought about Gilbert. There was not, however, much time to think about him. "Mount Holly," the beautiful old Gordon homestead, was a very gay place, overrun by Phil's friends of both sexes. There was quite a bewildering succession of drives, dances, picnics and boating parties, all expressively lumped together by Phil under the head of "jamborees"; Alec and Alonzo were so ...

— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... my collection seems written almost within measurable distance of the Christmas-card era. The sheet is headed by a beautifully embossed device of some holly in red and green, wishing the recipient of the letter a merry Xmas and a happy new year, while the border is crimped and edged with blue. I know not what it is, but there is something in the writer's highly finished style that reminds ...

— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... had started back into the forest stood still for a long time in his retreat. It was the hollow of a tall rock beside a falling stream of water, all flowing snow or transparent crystal. Holly trees and quicken trees grew from its crest, and long twines of ivy fell down before like green torrents. Behind them he concealed himself, when he heard the cries and the challengings and the baying of the hounds. Then he saw the maiden ...

— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... were a forgiving family, and when they all met at tea-time nobody seemed to remember Gwen's ill humour. The evening was a busy one, for there were holly and ivy to be put up in the Parsonage now the church was finished, and the usual mirth over a bough of mistletoe which old Mr. Hodson, who owned the big farm by the mill, always cut off every year from an apple tree in his orchard and brought to them with ...

— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... the brown oak-bough Vies with the red-gemmed holly now; And here and there, like pearls, there show The berries of the mistletoe. A sprig upon the chandelier Says to the maidens, "Come not here!" Even the pauper of the earth Some kindly gift ...

— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

More quotes...