Noun: hollyhock
| Singular | hollyhock |
| Plural | hollyhocks |
Sample Sentences
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No cottage in Coughton boasted taller hollyhocks, nor finer Michaelmas daisies in the autumn than Dame Magdalen’s almshouses; […] [1842, [Katherine] Thomson, chapter X, in Widows and Widowers. A Romance of Real Life., volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 227–228:]
Nouns inflected like hollyhock
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English holihocke, holyhokke, holihoc, from holi (“holy”) + hocke, hokke, hoc (“mallow”) (from Old English hoc (“marsh mallow”). The modern hollyhock was probably unknown in England until the 15th century, so usage before then no doubt referred to some other mallow.
2. Apparently so called for being brought from the Holy Land; compare an old name for it in Medieval Latin cauli Sancti Cuthberti (“St. Cuthbert's cole”). See: Middle English Nouns '
holihocke', Old English Nouns '
hoc'.