immortelle

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French immortelle.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɪmɔːˈtɛl/

Noun

immortelle (plural immortelles)

1. Any of various papery flowers, often dried and used as decoration.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, “His Chance in Life”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio Society, published 2005, page 55:

     […] a big rabbit-warren of a house full of […] fragments of the day's market, garlic, stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on strings for screens, old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah puppies, plaster images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns.

2. Any of various trees of the genus Erythrina.
   • 1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, published 2001, Part Two, Chapter 3:

     The land between the road and the gully widened; the gully grew shallower. Beyond it Mr Biswas saw the tall immortelles and their red and yellow flowers. And then the untrodden road blazed with the flowers.

Translations

Any of various papery flowers

• Bulgarian: безсмъртниче n (bezsmǎrtniče)
• Greek:

  Ancient: χρυσοκόμη f (khrusokómē)

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /i.mɔʁ.tɛl/

• Audio

  (file)

Adjective

immortelle

1. feminine singular of immortel

Noun

immortelle f (plural immortelles)

La fleur d’une immortelle à bractées (Helichrysum bracteatum)

1. immortelle
2. everlasting flower

Further reading

• “immortelle”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.