lavender

From Middle English lavendre, from Anglo-Norman lavendre (French lavande), from Medieval Latin lavendula, possibly from Latin lividus (“bluish”), but influenced by lavō (“to wash”) due to the use of lavender in washing clothes.

• (non-rhotic)
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlæv.ən.dəː/, [ˈlæv.ən.dəː] ~ [ˈlæv.n̩.dəː]

    • Audio (Southern England):

      (file)

• (rhotic)
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈlæv.ən.dɚ/, [ˈlæv.ən.dɚ] ~ [ˈlæv.n̩.dɹ̩]
• Rhymes: -ævəndə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: lav‧en‧der

lavender (countable and uncountable, plural lavenders)

2. Any of a group of European plants, genus, Lavandula, of the mint family.
3. A pale bluish purple colour, like that of the lavender flower.

   lavender:  

   web lavender:  

4. (film, historical, uncountable) A kind of film stock used for creating positive prints from negatives as part of the process of duplicating the negatives.

• (plant): common lavender

• launder

• Appendix:Colors

lavender (comparative more lavender, superlative most lavender)

1. Having a pale purple colour.
2. (originally US) Pertaining to LGBT people and rights.
   • 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 81:

     “Now in here,” their guide, sweating dark tentacles into his tab collar, briefed them, “you are going to see the members of the third sex, the lavender crowd this city by the Bay is so justly famous for.

   • 1981 August 22, Nancy Walker, “Still Coming Out, After All These Years”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 6, page 11:

     My sother (significant other) and I have been together almost nineteen years. Exactly half of the usual wedding vows taken traditionally by non-lavender couples — for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, — have been characteristic of our relationship.

3. (politics) Pertaining to lesbian feminism; opposing heterosexism. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

lavender (third-person singular simple present lavenders, present participle lavendering, simple past and past participle lavendered)

1. (transitive) To decorate or perfume with lavender.
   • 1986, Katherine Gibson Fougera, With Custer's Cavalry, page 47:

     Short shafts of dying sunlight mingled with the deepening grey, lavendering the horizon, and all nature seemed to hush as though waiting to welcome the night.

• lavender on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Lavandula on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Category:Lavandula on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• “lavender adj.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present.

• Vreeland

Borrowed from Old French lavandier, lavandiere, from Medieval Latin lavandārius.

• launder, lavendeer, lavendere, lavendre, lawender, lawnder, lawndere

• IPA^(key): /lavənˈdeːr/, /ˈlavəndər/, /lau̯nˈdeːr/, /ˈlau̯ndər/

lavender (plural lavenderes)

1. A washer; one (especially a woman) who washes clothes.
2. (euphemistic) A woman employed in prostitution or who has loose morals.

• lavendrie

• English: launder
• Scots: launer

• “lavender(e, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 24 December 2018.

lavender

1. alternative form of lavendre