See Also: Pimpernel(medicine)
pimpernel(dictionary)
pimpernel(dictionary)
Water pimpernel(medicine)
Scarlet Pimpernel, The(dictionary)

pimpernel (iou)



pimpernel noun. LME.
[Old French pimpernelle (mod. pimprenelle), earlier piprenelle from Proto-Romance, from adjective derived from Latin piper PEPPER noun, the fruit of the burnet resembling a peppercorn.]
Either of two plants of the rose family, the great burnet, Sanguisorba officinalis, and the salad burnet, S. minor. Also, burnet saxifrage. LME-M19.
More fully scarlet pimpernel. A small low-growing weed, Anagallis arvensis, of the primrose family, with smooth ovate leaves and usu. bright scarlet (rarely blue, flesh-coloured, or white) flowers which close in cloudy or rainy weather. LME.
b. With specifying word: any of various plants related to or resembling the scarlet pimpernel. L16.
bog pimpernel a creeping plant of wet places, Anagallis tenella, with delicate pink flowers. water pimpernel = brookweed s.v. BROOK noun. wood pimpernel, yellow pimpernel a procumbent loosestrife of woodland, Lysimachia nemorum, with ovate leaves and yellow flowers.
(Usu. Pimpernel.) A person whose exploits resemble those of the elusive and daring hero of Baroness Orczy's novel The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), who smuggled aristocrats and their supporters out of revolutionary France. Also transf., a thing that is elusive or evades capture. M20.