herblet

herblet

English

Etymology

herb +‎ -let

Noun

herblet (plural herblets)

1. A small herb.
   • 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act IV, scene ii]:

     The herbs that have on them cold dew o’ the night
     Are strewings fitt’st for graves. Upon their faces.
     You were as flowers, now wither’d: even so
     These herblets shall, which we upon you strew.

   • 1822, Henry Francis Cary (translator), Ode, Book 4, No. 18, by Pierre de Ronsard, The London Magazine, Volume 5, June 1822, p. 510,

     God shield ye, bright embroider’d train

     Of butterflies, that, on the plain,

     Of each sweet herblet sip;

   • 1907, Caroline Peachey (translator), “Tommelise” by Hans Christian Andersen in Danish Fairy Legends and Tales, London: George Bell & Sons, pp. 194-195,

     […] she dined off the honey from the flowers, and drank from the dew that every morning spangled the leaves and herblets around her.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for herblet in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)

Anagrams

• Helbert, blether