fleur-de-lis

Questions about fleur-de-lis

What does fleur-de-lis mean?

fleur-de-lis means "plants with sword-shaped leaves and erect stalks bearing bright-colored flowers composed of three petals and three drooping sepals". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in fleur-de-lis?

fleur-de-lis has 4 syllables and divides as fle-ur--de--lis under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for fleur-de-lis?

Close synonyms include iris, flag, sword lily, fleur-de-lys. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is fleur-de-lis a common word?

fleur-de-lis is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.