lavender

Plurallavenders

Formslavenders, lavendering, lavendered

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Any of a group of European shrubs of the genus Lavandula, in the mint family, known for fragrant purple flowers.

   Bees crowded the lavender growing beside the old stone wall.

   Farmers across Provence harvest lavender for its fragrant oil each summer.

   Note

   Behind the plant's name sits a likely blend of two Latin words. Medieval Latin lavendula may come from lividus, "bluish," but its shape was pulled toward lavō, "wash," because the plant was used in washing clothes. Middle English lavendre arrived through Anglo-Norman, and French still says lavande. Count individual plants (several lavenders in a bed), but treat the cut herb as a mass (a bunch of lavender).

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A pale bluish purple, like the color of the lavender flower.

   The bridesmaids wore dresses in a delicate lavender.

   Morning light washed the snowy fields in lavender and gray.

   Similarlilac, mauve

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a pale purple color.

   Thin lavender clouds stretched across the evening sky.

   He chose a lavender tie to match the invitation.

   Similarlilac, mauve

   Note

   The adjective compares with more and most, as in more lavender or most lavender, never with -er and -est. It works before a noun (a lavender tie) and after a linking verb (the clouds turned lavender), the way most color words do.

4. 4
   adjective

   Relating to LGBT people and the movement for their rights.

   Activists built a lavender coalition ahead of the local election.

   The campus celebrates a lavender graduation each year for its LGBT students.

   Similarqueer

   Note

   A political sense whose voice has shifted. In Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) it comes from a leering tour guide showing off "the lavender crowd." By 1981 Nancy Walker uses "non-lavender couples" for everyone outside her own community. It almost always sits before a noun (crowd, coalition, couples), and it takes the prefix non- easily.

5. 5
   adjective

   Relating to lesbian feminism, especially its opposition to heterosexism.

   Her essays drew heavily on lavender feminist thought from the 1970s.

   The collective described itself as lavender and feminist in its founding statement.

   Similarlesbian

   Note

   A narrower political use, at home in lesbian-feminist writing. Here the adjective carries an argument, the rejection of heterosexism, rather than simply naming who belongs. Context does the sorting. In a coalition's name the same word usually means the broader LGBT sense. Beside feminist or in a manifesto, it signals this sharper position.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To scent or decorate something with lavender.

   The maids would lavender the bed sheets to keep them fresh.

   She likes to lavender her drawers with sprigs from the garden.

   Similarscent, perfume

   Note

   Mostly a household verb for sheets and drawers scented with sprigs, but it can also mean coloring. In Katherine Gibson Fougera's With Custer's Cavalry (1986), dying sunlight is "lavendering the horizon," which tints rather than perfumes. The forms are regular and keep a single r: lavendered, lavendering.

7. 7
   nounhistoricaluncountable

   A fine-grain positive film stock used in film duplication to produce a print from a negative, from which further duplicate negatives could be made.

   Like a master backup that exists only so the irreplaceable original is never handled.

   The technician struck a lavender from the camera negative before making release prints.

   Archivists found a faded reel of lavender that had preserved an otherwise lost cut.

   Note

   A word from the film laboratory, now historical. It turns up in archival and restoration writing about how duplicate negatives were once made, not in talk of current production. The stock sat in the middle of a chain: original negative, then a lavender positive, then fresh negatives. Its value lay in being an intermediate step, which is why a surviving lavender can preserve a version of a film that is otherwise lost.

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