syringa

American  

[suh-ring-guh] / səˈrɪŋ gə /

noun

1. mock orange.

2. any shrub or tree of the genus Syringa, including the lilacs.

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syringa British  

/ sɪˈrɪŋɡə /

noun

1. another name for mock orange lilac

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Etymology

Origin of syringa

1655–65; < New Latin < Greek sȳring- (stem of sŷrinx syrinx ) + New Latin -a -a ²; name first given to mock orange, the stems of which were used in pipe-making

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

syringa

There’s a California lilac — not the true syringa lilac of rhapsodic song and poetry but a ceanothus.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 29, 2022

The poem recalled Dr. Crozier as a bald, bigheaded boy who waged war with syringa berries, “the stick-breaker, the toddler I carried on my shoulders up and down the dirt tracks.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2014

It was called "Heaven Trees," a place of calm walks and lawns, fragrant with myrtle and syringa.

From Time Magazine Archive

There was nothing to warn—no thunder in the sky, no little mother-bird on the syringa bush.

From The Very Small Person by Elizabeth Shippen Green Elliott

He could see nothing indeed across the lawn but the branches of the pine trees waving low, and beneath them feathery syringa bushes, upland fern, and evergreens with leathery leaves.

From The Firebrand by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett