weeping willow

American  

noun

1. an Asian willow, Salix babylonica, characterized by the drooping habit of its branches.

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weeping willow British  

noun

1. a hybrid willow tree, Salix alba × S. babylonica , known as S. alba var. tristis , having long hanging branches: widely planted for ornament

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Etymology

Origin of weeping willow

First recorded in 1725–35

Example Sentences

Ms. Mori’s creations look like chimerical species — hybrids of barnacles and cumulus clouds, a baobab and a weeping willow, a waterlily and fiddlehead ferns, sea urchin spines and a swarm of starlings.

From New York Times • Mar. 2, 2023

At the entrance to the Planet Word museum in Washington, D.C., stands a remarkable sculpture designed to resemble a weeping willow.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 3, 2022

About 400 metres from ground zero in Hiroshima, a weeping willow and other plants regrew from their roots.

From Nature • Mar. 3, 2020

She is tall, with straight brown hair and long arms that dangle, a little comically, like the boughs of a weeping willow.

From The New Yorker • Sep. 14, 2015

She makes the most of what she has, filling the window nook with houseplants of all kinds, a bonsai weeping willow, a towering ficus with drooping fronds, a fiddle-leaf fig.

From "A Bird Will Soar" by Alison Green Myers