butterwort

[ buht-er-wurt, -wawrt ]

noun
  1. any small, carnivorous plant of the genus Pinguicula, having leaves that secrete a viscid substance in which small insects are caught.

Origin of butterwort

1
First recorded in 1590–1600; butter + wort2

Words Nearby butterwort

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use butterwort in a sentence

  • This is the butterwort (Pinguicula), and it is not a bad name, for the leaves remind one of butter.

    The Romance of Plant Life | G. F. Scott Elliot
  • There are three British species of butterwort (Pinguicula), similar in structure and habit, all growing in bogs and on wet rocks.

    Field and Woodland Plants | William S. Furneaux
  • From no catalogue of quaint plants could the butterwort be omitted.

  • He could watch the butterwort curving round the edges of its wan green foliage upon the captured limbs of fly or aphis.

    Charles Darwin | Grant Allen
  • The order to which the butterwort and the bladderworts belong also afforded valuable results.

    Life of Charles Darwin | G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

British Dictionary definitions for butterwort

butterwort

/ (ˈbʌtəˌwɜːt) /


noun
  1. a plant of the genus Pinguicula, esp P. vulgaris, that grows in wet places and has violet-blue spurred flowers and fleshy greasy glandular leaves on which insects are trapped and digested: family Lentibulariaceae

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012