mignonette

English edit

A botanical illustration of the mignonette (Reseda odorata; sense 1)^[1]

From French mignonnette, from mignon (“dainty”) + -ette (“diminutive suffix”).

mignonette (plural mignonettes)

A plant, Reseda odorata, having greyish-green flowers with orange-coloured stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb. [from early 18th c.]
- 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 2:
  After amusing herself for a brief time with picking to pieces some mignonette which filled a box on the window-sill, Marie threw the flowers from her, and exclaimed,—"And here we are seated together, as we used to talk away half the night in Italy. Good Heavens! how we are altered!"
- 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 43, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
  These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s window.
A mignonette tree (Lawsonia inermis), source of the dye henna.
A mignonette vine
A greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.
mignonette:

the plant Reseda odorata

greyish-green colour — see also reseda

mignonette (comparative more mignonette, superlative most mignonette)

Of a greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.
- 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 44:
  She wore a dishabille of mignonette-green silk and bead-diapered head-dress that added several inches to her height […].