clover
pronunciation
How to pronounce clover in British English:
UK [ˈkləʊvə(r)]
How to pronounce clover in American English:
US [ˈkloʊvə(r)]
-
- Noun:
- a plant of the genus Trifolium
Word Origin
- clover (n.)
- Middle English, from Old English clafre, clæfre "clover," from Proto-Germanic *klaibron (cognates: Old Saxon kle, Middle Low German klever, Middle Dutch claver, Dutch klaver, Old High German kleo, German Klee "clover"), which is of uncertain origin. Klein and Liberman write that it is probably from West Germanic *klaiwaz- "sticky pap" (see clay), and Liberman adds, "The sticky juice of clover was the base of the most popular sort of honey." First reference in English to the suposed luck of a four-leaf clover is from c. 1500. To be in clover "live luxuriously" is 1710, "clover being extremely delicious and fattening to cattle" [Johnson]. Four-leaf clover attested from 1845.
Example
- 1. Three countries were put outside the clover : england , denmark and america .
- 2. Clover 's director of computer operationsdescribed the technology platform as " one big kludge . "
- 3. And how , he asks , can opponents to the damage done by industrially produced nitrogen-based fertilisers object to the genetic engineering that might let crops produce their own fertilisers as blamelessly as clover does ?
- 4. The total effect was far from pastoral , however , even though dickinson thought that to make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee .
- 5. At elias , a completed chevron operation , the only sound to disturb the replanted clover meadow is a faint whooshing as gas passes to an underground pipe network .