corolla

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin corōlla (“small garland, little crown”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} a diminutive of corōna (“crown, garland, wreath”),^{[2][3][7][8][9]} the source of crown.^[3][5][6] Dictionary.com analyses it as the stem of the Latin noun with the diminutive suffix -la.^[10] The botanical use was set by Linnaeus,^[2] and Merriam-Webster takes the botanical word as New Latin.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A little crown or coronet, or a figure shaped like one: 1671, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.^[2][4] Etymonline dates the word to the 1670s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The first English sense, a little crown, is recorded only once and is obsolete.^[2][12] The word lives on as a term of botany that Linnaeus had given the Latin word:^[2] the whorl of petals that forms the inner envelope of a flower, recorded in English from 1753, in the supplement to Chambers's Cyclopaedia.^{[2][4][3][11]} The image is of the ring of petals as a little garland around the flower's centre.^[2][9]

Timeline

• 1671 – a little crown or coronet (obsolete).^[2][4]
• 1753 – in botany, the whorl of petals of a flower.^[2][4][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The petals of a flower taken together, separate or joined, forming the inner floral envelope inside the calyx and often brightly coloured: The bell-shaped corolla of the foxglove is purple.^[11][13][2]
2. (obsolete) A little crown or coronet.^[2][12][9]

Word family

• corollate

Related words

• corollaceous
• corona
• crown
• coronet
• corollary

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins