Word.ws English Dictionary

spearwort

spearwort noun: any of various perennial herbaceous plants in the Ranunculus (buttercup) genus.

spearwort: any of various perennial herbaceous plants in the Ranunculus (buttercup) genus
Image: Konrad Lackerbeck, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

spearwort (countable and uncountable, plural spearworts)

  1. Any of various perennial herbaceous plants in the Ranunculus (buttercup) genus.
    • Nor taint-worm ſhall infect the yeaning herds / Nor penny-graſs, nor ſpearwort's poiſ'nous leaf.1757, John Dyer, “Book I”, in The Fleece: A Poem […] , London: R. and J. Dodsley, page 40

Forms of spearwort

pluralspearworts

Origin of spearwort

From Middle English sperwort, sperewort, from Old English sperewyrt, i.e. spear + wort.

Words formed from spearwort

  • adder's-tongue spearwort
  • creeping spearwort
  • greater spearwort
  • great spearwort
  • lesser spearwort
  • low spearwort
  • water-plantain spearwort
  • water spearwort

Questions about spearwort

What does spearwort mean?
Spearwort means any of various perennial herbaceous plants in the Ranunculus (buttercup) genus.
What part of speech is spearwort?
Spearwort is a noun.
What is the plural of spearwort?
The plural of spearwort is spearworts.

Words near spearwort in the dictionary

  1. speartips
  2. spearwoman
  3. spearwomen
  4. spearwood
  5. spearwork
  6. spearwort
  7. spearworts
  8. speary
  9. speat
  10. speats
  11. spec

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spearwort (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: “spearwort.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spearwort. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.