MAIDENHAIR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does maidenhair mean? 

• MAIDENHAIR (noun)
  The noun MAIDENHAIR has 1 sense:

1. any of various small to large terrestrial ferns of the genus Adiantum having delicate palmately branched fronds

  Familiarity information: MAIDENHAIR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MAIDENHAIR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any of various small to large terrestrial ferns of the genus Adiantum having delicate palmately branched fronds

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

maidenhair; maidenhair fern

Hypernyms ("maidenhair" is a kind of...):

fern (any of numerous flowerless and seedless vascular plants having true roots from a rhizome and fronds that uncurl upward; reproduce by spores)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "maidenhair"):

Adiantum capillus-veneris; common maidenhair; southern maidenhair; Venus'-hair fern; Venus maidenhair; Venushair (delicate maidenhair fern with slender shining black leaf stalks; cosmopolitan)

Adiantum pedatum; American maidenhair fern; five-fingered maidenhair fern (hardy palmately branched North American fern with divergent recurved branches borne on lustrous dark reddish stipes)

Adiantum bellum; Bermuda maidenhair; Bermuda maidenhair fern (delicate endemic Bermudian fern with creeping rootstock)

Adiantum tenerum; brittle maidenhair; brittle maidenhair fern (tropical American fern with broad pinnae; widely cultivated)

Holonyms ("maidenhair" is a member of...):

Adiantum; genus Adiantum (cosmopolitan genus of ferns: maidenhair ferns; in some classification systems placed in family Polypodiaceae or Adiantaceae)

 Context examples 

Also called ginkgo and maidenhair tree.

(Ginkgo biloba, NCI Dictionary)

Also called ginkgo biloba and maidenhair tree.

(Ginkgo, NCI Dictionary)

One huge gingko tree, topping all the others, shot its great limbs and maidenhair foliage over the fort which we had constructed.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)