Word.ws English Dictionary

lily of the valley

lily of the valley noun: a flowering plant, Convallaria majalis, with richly fragrant pendant bells.

lily of the valley: a flowering plant, Convallaria majalis, with richly fragrant pendant bells
Image: Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

lily of the valley (plural lilies of the valley)

  1. A flowering plant, Convallaria majalis, with richly fragrant pendant bells.
    • Oh, what a perfect thought. Lilies-of-the-valley, and white pansies, double white violets and white velvet ribbon… From an unknown friend. … From one who understands. … For a Little Girl.1920, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Revelations”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 271
  2. A flower of this plant.
    • The aroma given off by flowers has an aphrodisiac effect, especially on women. This is so particularly in the case of lilies of the valley, gardenia, frangipani, and henna.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 98

Noun (2) capitalized: Lily of the Valley

Lily of the Valley (plural Lilies of the Valley)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of lily of the valley.

Forms of lily of the valley

plurallilies of the valley
alternative formlily-of-the-valley
pluralLilies of the Valley

Origin of lily of the valley

Calque of Biblical Hebrew שׁוֹשַׁנַּת הָעֲמָקִים (šôšannat hāʿămāqîm), a reference to Song of Solomon 2:1.

Questions about lily of the valley

What does lily of the valley mean?
Lily of the valley means a flowering plant, Convallaria majalis, with richly fragrant pendant bells.
What part of speech is lily of the valley?
Lily of the valley is a noun.
What is the plural of lily of the valley?
The plural of lily of the valley is lilies of the valley.

Words near lily of the valley in the dictionary

  1. lily foot
  2. lily iron
  3. lily irons
  4. lily of the Incas
  5. lily of the Nile
  6. lily of the valley
  7. lily of the valley tree
  8. lily pad
  9. lily pads
  10. lily-frail
  11. lily-handed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lily of the valley (page history and authors); Lily of the Valley (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lily of the valley.wav.

Cite this entry: “lily of the valley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lily_of_the_valley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.