英和和英

語源

Borrowed from translingual Zinnia. Coined in 1767, after Johann Gottfried Zinn, German botanist (d. 1759).

発音

• (General American) IPA: /ˈzɪn.i.ə/, /ˈzi.ni.ə/, /ˈzɪn.jə/, /ˈzi.njə/

名詞

zinnia (plural zinnias)

1. Any of several brightly coloured flowering plants, of the genus Zinnia, native to tropical America; old maid.
   • 1947, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 134:

     […] the Consul at this moment greeted Mr. Quincey's cat, momentarily forgetting its owner again as the grey, meditative animal, with a tail so long it trailed on the ground, came stalking through the zinnias: […]

   • 1963 (date written), John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces, London: Penguin Books, published 1980 (1981 printing), →ISBN:

     Santa sighed at the unfairness of it all and slammed the picture down on the mantelpiece among the bowl of wax fruit and the bouquet of paper zinnias and the statue of the Virgin Mary and the figurine of the Infant of Prague.

派生語

• creeping zinnia