dusty miller


noun
  1. Botany.

    • any of several composite plants, as Centaurea cineraria, Senecio cineraria, or the beach wormwood, having pinnate leaves covered with whitish pubescence.

  2. Angling. a type of artificial fly used chiefly for trout and salmon.

Origin of dusty miller

1
First recorded in 1815–25

Words Nearby dusty miller

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use dusty miller in a sentence

  • Lucy and I had both a fight for it with the dusty miller; I know it was a hard fight on my part, and I am quite heroic.

    Dracula | Bram Stoker
  • Small insects of night gathered, and at last a little dusty miller, but nothing came of any size.

    A Girl Of The Limberlost | Gene Stratton Porter
  • Among foliage plants such things as coleus, dusty miller, begonia, and some geraniums are adaptable.

  • He was lean and wiry and the dust of his mill seemed to have been so ground into his very skin that he was a regular dusty miller.

  • I'd like to whip him, till all the dust flew out of his dusty miller clothes—so I would!

British Dictionary definitions for dusty miller

dusty miller

noun
  1. Also called: snow-in-summer a caryophyllaceous plant, Cerastium tomentosum, of SE Europe and Asia, having white flowers and downy stems and leaves: cultivated as a rock plant

  2. a plant, Artemisia stelleriana, of NE Asia and E North America, having small yellow flower heads and downy stems and leaves: family Asteraceae (composites)

  1. any of various other downy plants, such as the rose campion

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