Dictionary

ferny en · ADJ

Etymology

From Middle English ferny, from Old English fearniġ, equivalent to fern + -y.

Meanings

1. Of or pertaining to ferns.
2. Resembling or characteristic of a fern, in appearance, smell, etc.
   • All kinds of mosses grew by the stream—tufty, flat, ferny, and curly, green, yellow and a whitish kind that was tipped with scarlet sealing wax. 1942, Emily Carr, “Time”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:
   • Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds. 1954, William Golding, “Chapter One”, in Lord of the Flies:
3. Covered in or filled with ferns; flanked or surrounded by ferns.
   • We'll walk over the spring fields and through those ferny old woods. 1939, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 1, in Anne of Ingleside:
   • He skirted all stables, kennels, breweries, carpenters' shops, washhouses, places where they make tallow candles, kill oxen, forge horse-shoes, stitch jerkins—for the house was a town ringing with men at work at their various crafts—and gained the ferny path leading uphill through the park unseen. 1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015:
   • And from the bush there came the sound of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the splashing of big drops on large leaves […] 1922, Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay”, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, Penguin, published 2007:

Forms

Deriveds

fernily

Translations (4)

yol vearnee (of or pertaining to ferns) · it felceto (of or pertaining to ferns) · cy rhedynaidd (of or pertaining to ferns) · eo filika (of or pertaining to ferns)