Word.ws English Dictionary

dryas

/ˈdɹaɪ.əs/

dryas noun: any of several plants of the genus Dryas; the mountain avens.

dryas: any of several plants of the genus Dryas; the mountain avens
Image: Kim Hansen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

dryas (plural dryases)

  1. Any of several plants of the genus Dryas; the mountain avens.
  2. One of two periods of cold and increased glaciation thousands of years before the present (Younger Dryas and Older Dryas).

Noun (2) capitalized: Dryas

Dryas (uncountable)

  1. Either of two climatic stages of the late glacial period in Northern Europe in which plants of the genus Dryas were abundant

Forms of dryas

pluraldryases

Origin of dryas

Borrowed from translingual Dryas for the plants, from both Latin Dryas and Ancient Greek Δρῠᾰ́ς (Drŭắs), derived from δρῦς (drûs, “tree, oak”). The second definition comes from the large quantity of pollen from the plant that is found in ice cores dating from these periods.

Named after the wildflower Dryas octopetala, fossils of which dated to approximately the Younger Dryas period are common in parts of Europe.

Words formed from dryas

Words that rhyme with dryas

Questions about dryas

What does dryas mean?
Dryas means any of several plants of the genus Dryas; the mountain avens.
What part of speech is dryas?
Dryas is a noun.
How do you pronounce dryas?
Dryas is pronounced /ˈdɹaɪ.əs/.
What is the plural of dryas?
The plural of dryas is dryases.

Words near dryas in the dictionary

  1. dryades
  2. dryadic
  3. dryads
  4. dryandra
  5. dryandras
  6. dryas
  7. dryasdust
  8. dryasdusts
  9. dryases
  10. drybag
  11. drybags

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dryas (page history and authors); Dryas (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dryas.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dryas. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.