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Periwinkle   Listen
noun
Periwinkle  n.  (Bot.) A trailing herb of the genus Vinca. Note: The common perwinkle (Vinca minor) has opposite evergreen leaves and solitary blue or white flowers in their axils. In America it is often miscalled myrtle. See under Myrtle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Periwinkle" Quotes from Famous Books



... cried, joyfully, running in where Mrs. Ripwinkley was setting little vases and baskets about on shelf and table, between the white, plain, muslin draperies of the long parlor windows. In vases and baskets were sweet May flowers; bunches of deep-hued, rich-scented violets, stars of blue and white periwinkle, and Miss Craydocke's lilies of the valley in their tall, cool leaves; each kind gathered by itself in clusters and handfuls. Inside the wide, open fireplace, behind the high brass fender and the shining andirons, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... banks changes to sweet grass, clovers, woodruffe, and daisies, and the flowers natural to the soil can be planted or will often spring up by themselves. In spring the banks should be set thick with violets, primroses, and the lovely bronze, crimson, and purple polyanthuses. Periwinkle, daffodils, crocuses, and scarlet or yellow tulips will all flourish and blossom before the grass grows too high or hides their flowers. For later in the year taller plants, which can rise, as all summer wood-plants do, above the level of the grasses, must be set ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... which had wilted and died. When he came to the summer-house, he found his guest sitting there demurely with her hands folded in her lap. She had gathered some little sprigs of box and a few blossoms of periwinkle and late lilies of the valley, and they lay on the bench beside her. "So you did not go to church with Marilla?" the doctor said. "I dare say one sermon a day is enough for so small a person as you." For Nan's part, no sermon at all would have caused ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... Affectation. Mock Orange Counterfeit. Myrtle Love in absence. Mistletoe Insurmountable. Narcissus Egotism. Nasturtium Patriotism. Oxalis Reverie. Orange Blossom Purity. Olive Peace. Oleander Beware. Primrose Modest worth. Pink, White Pure love. " Red Devoted love. Phlox Our hearts are united. Periwinkle Sweet memories. Paeony Ostentation. Pansy You occupy my thoughts. Poppy Oblivion. Rhododendron Agitation. Rose, Bud Confession of love. " " White Too young to love. " Austrian Thou art all that is lovely. " Leaf I never trouble. " Monthly Beauty ever new. " Moss Superior merit. " Red ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... takes the empty home of a periwinkle. As he grows he needs a larger house, and so leaves the tight shell and pops his tail into a bigger one, generally a whelk shell. If he meets with another Hermit there is a battle, one trying to steal the other's shell. ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith

... stopped reading to say to the primroses and anemones covering this slope, 'I am your brother!' Mon Dieu! I am sorry to have disturbed the charming conversation! And hold! your eyes are a little the color of the periwinkle." ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... the little bit of skin from under his pillow; it was as tiny and as fragile as a periwinkle petal. He showed ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... made a large adieu and left me, for he thought he saw some one through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wuerzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... coordination of muscular effort. In the light of knowledge gained in later years, I can now see in that long, slouching, shuffling figure, in that tallow-colored face with the bloodless, loose lips and the wandering, mystic eyes of periwinkle blue—I can see in that girl-face framed by a trashy picture-hat, and in that girl-form wrapped in the old golf-cape, one of the earth's unfortunates; a congenital failure; a female creature doomed from her mother's ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... themselves to the throat with grapes and custard-apples. The fat beccaficoes beloved of the epicurean fell by hundreds into the limed horsehair traps. Greek, Egyptian and negro girls, laughing under garlands of hibiscus, periwinkle and tuberoses, coaxed the fat morsels out of the black men to carry home for a supper treat, while acrobats, comic singers, sellers of cakes, drinks and sweetmeats, with strolling jugglers and jesters and Jewish fortune-tellers of both ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... our markets are of an inferior dwarf kind, or, properly, waterfalls, i.e., fruit shook off the branches of the tree it grows upon by the motion of the water, as those in our gardens are by that of the wind! The lobster-trees appeared the richest, but the crab and oysters were the tallest. The periwinkle is a kind of shrub; it grows at the foot of the oyster-tree, and twines round it as the ivy does the oak. I observed the effect of several accidents by shipwreck, &c., particularly a ship that had been wrecked by striking against a mountain or rock, the top of which ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... with its mystic virtues, and the cumin-see and cyclamen, which from the time of Theophrastus have been coveted for their magic virtues. The purslane, crocus, and periwinkle were thought to inspire love; while the agnus castus and the Saraca Indica (one of the sacred plants of India), a species of the willow, were supposed to drive away all feelings of love. Similarly in Voigtland, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... period, represented by the Red Crag, seventy out of every hundred species of shells still exist; and of an older period still, represented by the Coraline Crag, there survive sixty out of every hundred. In the Red Crag, for instance, we find the first known ancestors of our common edible periwinkle and common edible mussel; and in the Coraline Crag, the first known ancestors of the common horse-mussel, the common whelk, the common oyster, and the great pecten. There then occurs a break in the geologic deposits of Britain, which, however, in other parts of Europe we find ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... with the inhabitants, was its greatest mart, from which it was spread among the tribes, both north and east. Wood, describing the Narragansets in 1634, says they "are the most curious minters of the wampompeage and mowhakes which they forme out of the inmost wreaths of periwinkle shels. The northerne, easterne, and westerne Indians fetch all their coyne from these southern mint- masters. From hence they have most of their curious pendants and bracelets; hence they have their great stone pipes ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... continued to the brow of the hill, where a few scattered slabs stood erect as sentinels over the river banks. For a moment I stood among them, watching the blue haze of the opposite shore; then turning away I rolled over on my back and lay at full length in the periwinkle that covered the ground. From beyond the church I could hear Uncle Methusalah, the negro caretaker, raking the dead leaves from the graves, and here and there among the dark boles of the trees there appeared presently thin ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... the man arrived at the girl's house the people were all sitting on the floor eating periwinkle, and as they sucked the meat out of the shell, they nodded their heads. The man, looking in at the door, saw them nod, and he thought they were nodding at him. So he did not tell them his errand, but returned ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole

... but now she had slipped out of it, and it lay all tumbled about her on the rug. She was in evening dress, and might have returned, as I had, from a ball. All blue, it was, blue of a wonderful shade—periwinkle, I think they call it, Her stockings were flesh-coloured and her shoes of gold: these she had taken off, the better to warm her little shining feet. White arms propped her towards the fire, and she sat sideways, with one leg straight by the warm kerb, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... "Primrose, Periwinkle, and the rest of them, allow me no comfort of my life unless I tell them a story every day or two. I have run away from home partly to escape the importunity of these little wretches! But I have written out six of the ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... another more agreeable to his taste. We are strange creatures of habit, especially in our feeding. I am fond of oysters, muscles, and cockles; but I do not think anything could induce me to taste a snail, a periwinkle, or a limpet. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... heart of one chamber they call unilocular, And in a sharp frost, or when snow-flakes fall floccular, Your wise man of old wrapp'd himself in a Roquelaure, Which was called a Wrap-rascal when folks would be jocular. And shell-fish, the small, Periwinkle and Cockle are, So with them will I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the blossoms plentifully scattered throughout. Prof. Blot, that prince of saladmakers, recommends the use of the blossoms and petals (not the leaves) of roses, pinks, sage, lady's slipper, marshmallow and periwinkle, as well as the nasturtium, for decorating the ordinary lettuce salad, and reminds his readers that roses and pinks may be had at all seasons of the year. In summer the lovely pink marshmallow is to be found wild in the country places ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous

... and blossomed beside his window, almost within his Tahitian hut, which was actually invaded by the luxuriant vegetation of the region. Oh! with what deep emotion;—with what avidity, if I may express it thus, did I gaze at and touch the periwinkle which was almost a fresh and living part of that unknown and distant land, of that ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... the annual ceremony was gone through as usual: Catherine, as head girl, proffered the good wishes and the volume of Carlyle; Lucy Morris, on behalf of the Nature Study Union, handed a bouquet of polyanthus, rosemary, periwinkle, pansies, and pink daisies culled from the garden, the earliness of which Miss Teddington remarked upon, as though she had not watched their progress ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... all safe with their dams, and many more besides. All the lambs that springtime I had named after the flowers that I hoped to plant another year in the garden of that cot beside the stream. And all the flowers I could see and name were safe beside their dams, as I leapt down the hillside. Nay, Periwinkle was missing! Periwinkle was ever a strayer, and Periwinkle's dam was bleating at the edge of the steep cliff up which the stranger toiled. It was Periwinkle and none other that he was carrying in his arms! Seeing ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... chrysanthemums, yellow, white, maroon, and a sort of medicinal rhubarb-pink, had backed up against the woodhouse as if seeking shelter. Lilies-of-the-valley planted in the shade and consequently anaemic and scant of bells, blended with the blue periwinkle until their mingled foliage made a great shield of deep, cool green that glistened against its setting of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... and the public was in the wrong. The role of Don Cesar de Bazan is a treacherously good role, which always tempts artists by the brilliancy of the first act; but the fourth act, which belongs entirely to him, is distressingly heavy and useless. It might be taken out of the piece just like a periwinkle out of its shell, and the piece would be none the less clear ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... UNCOMMON VEGETATION.—Uncle Periwinkle was very kind; he loved nature and his nephews dearly. He wore green spectacles, a dressing-gown all covered with leaves, and a large straw hat; in fact he was very fond of gardening, and reared all kinds of odd plants—this his nephews ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner

... score, And proved themselves most wealthy men! So, on they went, a prosperous crew, The people wise, the rulers clever— And God help those, like me and you, Who dared to doubt (as some now do) That the Periwinkle Revenue Would thus go ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... of the garden where a thread-like stream trickled under a bank of periwinkle, phlox, and ivy, and on through a little wood of cedars. The air was cool beneath the trees, and Rand raised his forehead to the blowing wind. The narrow pathway turned, and he came upon Deb and Miranda seated upon the bare, red earth and playing ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... wonderful, and sinister. She affected him with a touch of horror. She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. She had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. Aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot. It was as if she were dusted ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... the most part, in a pickle; but we should regret to say anything that might be misinterpreted. The periwinkle and wilk interest has sustained a severe shock; but potatoes continue to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various

... talked freely of his dead wife, he even made ill-placed jests about his widowerhood, and he never failed to kiss a pair of red lips when the chance offered; but, for all that, his gaze often wandered past the huge sycamore to the family graveyard, where rank periwinkle grew and mocking-birds nested. Through the long summer not a Sunday passed that he did not take fresh flowers to one of the neatly trimmed mounds where ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... Dressed in brown and gray, Walked about upon the sands Upon a summer's day: And there among the pebbles, When the wind was rather cold, He met with Mr. Floppy Fly, All dressed in blue and gold; And, as it was too soon to dine, They drank some periwinkle-wine, And played an hour or two, or more, At battlecock ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... her niece, within the limits of her income. Miss Marrable was herself a lady of very good family, the late Sir Gregory Marrable having been her uncle; but her only sister had married a Captain Lowther, whose mother had been first cousin to the Earl of Periwinkle; and therefore on her own account, as well as on that of her niece, Miss Marrable thought a good deal about blood. She was one of those ladies,—now few in number,—who within their heart of hearts conceive that ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... indeed that shellfish were counted good to eat; and among the rocks of the isle I found a great plenty of limpets, which at first I could scarcely strike from their places, not knowing quickness to be needful. There were, besides, some of the little shells that we call buckies; I think periwinkle is the English name. Of these two I made my whole diet, devouring them cold and raw as I found them; and so hungry was I that at first ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... in this fashion in her box, when Jenny Fagette came to join her there; Jenny Fagette, slender and fragile, the incarnation of Alfred de Musset's Muse, who at night wore out her eyes of periwinkle-blue by scribbling society notes and fashion articles. A mediocre actress, but a clever and wonderfully energetic woman, she was Nanteuil's most intimate friend. They recognized in each other remarkable qualities, qualities ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France



Words linked to "Periwinkle" :   seasnail, Catharanthus roseus, cayenne jasmine, Catharanthus, winkle, Cape periwinkle, red periwinkle, rose periwinkle, periwinkle plant derivative, genus Catharanthus, old maid, Vinca major, subshrub, Littorina, suffrutex, myrtle, Madagascar periwinkle, Vinca rosea, genus Littorina



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