English

Adjective

papaverous ‎(comparative more papaverous, superlative most papaverous)

1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the poppy.
   • 1658, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents, and Commonly Presumed Truths, R. W. (1658), page 298:

     Now instead of a smell of Delight our Mandrakes afford a papaverous and unpleasant odor, whether in the leaf or apple, as is discoverable in their simplicity or mixture.

   • 1988, Subhash C. Datta, Systematic Botany, New Age International (1988), ISBN 8122400132, page 259:

     The morphology of stamens and carpels of the crucifer flower as well as their anatomy bears testimony to a papaverous ancestry.

   • 2005, Mack Friedman, Setting the Lawn on Fire, University of Wisconsin Press (2005), ISBN 9780299213404, page 139:

     The mountains are dry and brown and so remote that not even helicopters fly overhead, spraying their poison over papaverous hillsides.

2. (figuratively) Inducing sleep; soporific.
   • 1837, "The Tuckahoe", Southern Literary Messenger, page 235, April 1837:

     He reduced the chaos of Smith to some order, and his style is sufficiently classical, but not the less prolix and papaverous on that account.

   • 1841, Peter Priggins, The College Scout (ed. Theodore Hook), Volume III, Henry Colburn (1841), page 104:

     "Then," said Mr. Eupheme, smiling benevolently, "the papaverous influences of Somnus or Morpheus deprived you of the advantage of ascertaining the modus operandi used in conducting an examination."

   • 1845, "North's Specimens of the British Critics", The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, August 1845, pages 242-243:

     Was it prudently considered that the dullest of critics can read only as long as his eyes are open? and that the function of judge must incessantly bring under his congnisance papaverous volumes, with which only a superhuman endowment of vigilance could hope successfully to contend?

   • 1860, Anonymous, Narragansett; or, The Plantations: A story of 177—, Volume II, Chapman and Hall (1860), page 26:

     These were sometimes stinging like the preachers at Paul's Cross, often eloquent like Bossuet, and the louder the Doctor's flock snored the greater satisfaction his conscience; indeed it was safest to be hard on them when they were asleep. At any rate he it was probably first diffused in Trinity the papaverous air which still exists there.

   • 2004, Michael J. B. Allen, "Life as a Dead Platonist", in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (eds. Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees, & Martin Davies), Brill (2002), ISBN 9789004118553, page 166:

     But why are the heaven-bathed souls consumed by the yearning to sleep, to embrace the narcotic, papaverous hymns of Orpheus to Night and Sleep, to leave being for becoming?

Related terms

• papaveraceous

Translations