mignonette

Syllables: mig·non·ette/ˌmɪnjəˈnɛt/

mignonette noun: a plant, Reseda odorata, having greyish-green flowers with orange-coloured stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb. Also the abbreviation of mignonette sauce.

Image: Edward Step, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

mignonette (countable and uncountable, plural mignonettes)

A plant, Reseda odorata, having greyish-green flowers with orange-coloured stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb.
- After amusing herself for a brief time with picking to pieces some mignonette which filled a box on the window-sill, Marie threw the flowers from her, and exclaimed,—"And here we are seated together, as we used to talk away half the night in Italy. Good Heavens! how we are altered!"1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 2
- These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s window.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 43, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
Synonyms:

reseda
A mignonette tree (Lawsonia inermis), source of the dye henna.
A mignonette vine.
A greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.

Adjective

mignonette (comparative more mignonette, superlative most mignonette)

Of a greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.
- She wore a dishabille of mignonette-green silk and bead-diapered head-dress that added several inches to her height […].1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 44
Synonyms:

reseda

Also used as

mignonette is also the abbreviation of mignonette sauce.

Synonyms of mignonette

reseda

Forms of mignonette

Noun
plural	mignonettes
alternative form (obsolete)	mignonnette
Adjective
comparative	more mignonette
superlative	most mignonette

Origin of mignonette

From French mignonnette, from mignon (“dainty”) + -ette (diminutive suffix).

Phrases with mignonette

mignonette sauces

Words that rhyme with mignonette

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mignonette

What does mignonette mean?: Mignonette means a plant, Reseda odorata, having greyish-green flowers with orange-coloured stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb.
What part of speech is mignonette?: Mignonette can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce mignonette?: Mignonette is pronounced /ˌmɪnjəˈnɛt/.
What is the plural of mignonette?: The plural of mignonette is mignonettes.

Words near mignonette in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: mignonette (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-mignonette.wav.

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