Chiefly poet. Also 4 flourette, 6–7 flouret, 7–8 flowret. [f. FLOWER sb. + -ET. Cf. FLORET.] A small flower.
c. 1400. Rom. Rose, 890.
| For nought y-clad in silk was he, | |
| But al in floures and flourettes, | |
| Y-painted al with amorettes. |
1590. Shaks., Mids. N., IV. i. 58.
| And that same dew which somtime on the buds, | |
| Was wont to swell like round and orient pearles; | |
| Stood now within the pretty flouriets eyes, | |
| Like teares that did their owne disgrace bewaile. |
1667. Milton, P. L., V. 379.
| So to the Silvan Lodge | |
| They came, that like Pomona’s Arbour smil’d | |
| With flourets deck’t and fragrant smells. |
1782. V. Knox, Ess. (1819), II. cxvii. 292. More sensible of the charms of a tree, or a flowret, than a common and inelegant spectator.
1838. Longf., Reaper & Flowers, iv.
| ‘My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,’ | |
| The Reaper said, and smiled; | |
| ‘Dear tokens of the earth are they, | |
| Where He was once a child.’ |
1873. Geikie, Gt. Ice Age, xxx. 423. In arctic regions the short summer brings into bloom a number of pretty flowerets, and causes the grasses to shoot up with surprising rapidity; but this is due to the influence of a sun that keeps above the horizon during the greater part of summer.
fig. 1753–4. Shenstone, Poet. Wks. (1854), 138.
| Let Art and Friendship’s joint essay | |
| Diffuse their flowerets in her way. |
