thistledown
thistledown noun: the soft, feathery pappus attached to the seeds of a thistle.
Noun
thistledown (usually uncountable, plural thistledowns)
- The soft, feathery pappus attached to the seeds of a thistle.
- Yet, let me not reproach myself, since the blame is due to her lightness of heart, her fickle fancy—no stabler than gossamer or thistledown—which the first wanton breath wafts elsewhere.1850, Mary Cowden Clarke, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines: A Series of Fifteen Tales
- “Oh,” said Zuleika, “of course I like being admired. Oh yes, I like all that very much indeed. In a way, I suppose, I’m even pleased that YOU admire me. But oh, what a little miserable pleasure that is in comparison with the rapture I have forfeited! I had never known the rapture of being in love....1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1912, →OCLC
Forms of thistledown
| plural | thistledowns |
|---|
Origin of thistledown
From thistle + down.
Questions about thistledown
- What does thistledown mean?
- Thistledown means the soft, feathery pappus attached to the seeds of a thistle.
- What part of speech is thistledown?
- Thistledown is a noun.
- What is the plural of thistledown?
- The plural of thistledown is thistledowns.
Words near thistledown in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: thistledown (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: “thistledown.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thistledown. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.