ferny
English
editEtymology
editFrom Middle English ferny, from Old English fearniġ, equivalent to fern + -y.
Adjective
editferny (comparative fernier, superlative ferniest)
- Of, or pertaining to ferns. (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:)
- Resembling or characteristic of a fern, in appearance, smell, etc.
- 1942, Emily Carr, “Time”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:
- All kinds of mosses grew by the stream—tufty, flat, ferny, and curly, green, yellow and a whitish kind that was tipped with scarlet sealing wax.
- 1954, William Golding, “Chapter One”, in Lord of the Flies:
- Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds.
- Covered in or filled with ferns; flanked or surrounded by ferns.
- 1922, Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay”, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, Penguin, published 2007:
- And from the bush there came the sound of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the splashing of big drops on large leaves […]
- 1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015:
- He skirted all stables, kennels, breweries, carpenters' shops, washhouses, places where they make tallow candles, kill oxen, forge horse-shoes, stitch jerkins—for the house was a town ringing with men at work at their various crafts—and gained the ferny path leading uphill through the park unseen.
- 1939, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 1, in Anne of Ingleside[1]:
- We'll walk over the spring fields and through those ferny old woods.
of or pertaining to ferns
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Derived terms
editMiddle English
editAlternative forms
editEtymology
editPronunciation
editAdjective
editferny
Descendants
editReferences
edit- “fē̆rnī, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms suffixed with -y (adjectival)
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English terms with quotations
- Middle English terms suffixed with -y
- Middle English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Middle English lemmas
- Middle English adjectives
- Middle English terms with rare senses