hollyhock
noun/ˈhɒlihɒk/
/ˈhɑːlihɑːk/
- a tall garden plant with white, yellow, red or purple flowers growing up its stemWord OriginMiddle English: from holy + obsolete hock ‘mallow’, of unknown origin. It originally denoted the marsh mallow which has medicinal uses (hence, perhaps, the use of ‘holy’); the current sense dates from the mid 16th cent.
Want to learn more?
Find out which words work together and produce more natural sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app.
Check pronunciation:
hollyhock