shell-flower

Questions about shell-flower

What does shell-flower mean?

shell-flower means "showy perennial of marshlands of eastern and central North America having waxy lanceolate leaves and flower with lower part creamy white and upper parts pale pink to deep purple".

How many syllables are in shell-flower?

shell-flower has 3 syllables and divides as shell--flo-wer 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 shell-flower?

Close synonyms include shellflower, turtlehead, snakehead, snake-head, Chelone glabra. 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 shell-flower a common word?

shell-flower 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.