skunk cabbage

Questions about skunk cabbage

What does skunk cabbage mean?

skunk cabbage means "deciduous perennial low-growing fetid swamp plant of eastern North America having minute flowers enclosed in a mottled greenish or purple cowl-shaped spathe". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for skunk cabbage?

Close synonyms include polecat weed, foetid pothos, Symplocarpus foetidus, Lysichiton americanum. 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 skunk cabbage a common word?

skunk cabbage is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.