laurel

noun

1. 1

   An evergreen shrub of species Laurus nobilis, having aromatic leaves of a lanceolate shape, with clusters of small, yellowish white flowers in their axils.

   Laurel leaves were used in the Orient to promote amatory exercise.

2. 2

   A crown of laurel.

3. 3

   figurativeHonor, distinction, fame.

   to win laurels

   to crown with laurels

   I was semi-famous; I had been something, but as one worthy critic remarked: past laurels fade fast.

4. 4

   Any plant of the family Lauraceae.

5. 5

   Any of various plants of other families that resemble laurels.

6. 6

   historicalAn English gold coin made in 1619, and so called because the king's head on it was crowned with laurel.

verb

1. 1

   To decorate with laurel, especially with a laurel wreath.

   Windows peered from the spaces between the columns, which rose to hold up the large portico laureling the home with chiseled, decorative wreaths and curving spirals.

2. 2

   To enwreathe.

   It wasn't hot this late in the year, and the sun was low in the southern sky, bracketed by pines and nearly hidden by a tree line laureling a trailer park.

3. 3

   informalTo award top honours to.

   In this regiment there was a young corporal, a native of Little K . He was laurelled and decorated more than many of his companions, for he excelled them all in courage, coolness, and daring. In one thing more he also excelled them — he was cruel, he was dissipated, and he was vicious in his tastes.

   Not in any vision of that order did he figure for most of the admirers who laurelled him on his eightieth birthday and the few who go on laurelling him still.

   He was laurelled in admiring headlines from both left and right.

   In 1973, the modern papist missionary was laurelled an honorary Doctor of Divinity by the institution founded by a Congregationalist missionary to the Indians of the northern wilds.

Forms

plural

laurels

past tense

laureled, laurelled

past participle

laureled, laurelled

present participle

laureling, laurelling

third person singular

laurels