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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
hollyhock
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And the whole garden, from the blades of grass to the tall proud hollyhocks, sighed with pleasure.
▪ Behind the honeysuckle and the hollyhocks there was revealed a life of hitherto unimagined degradation.
▪ Biennials: Plants that flower in their second year and then die, such as Sweet Williams and hollyhocks.
▪ Delphiniums and hollyhocks are planted in the sun to give colour and height.
▪ Gao Ma stumbled toward it and reached but to grab a branch covered with spiny hollyhocks.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hollyhock

Hollyhock \Hol"ly*hock\, n. [OE. holihoc; holi holy + hoc mallow, AS. hoc; cf. W. hocys mallows, hocys bendigaid hollyhock, lit., blessed mallow. Prob. so named because brought from the Holy Land. See Holy.] (Bot.) A species of Alth[ae]a ( Alth[ae]a rosea), bearing flowers of various colors; -- called also rose mallow.

Note: Rose mallow is listed as a variety of Hibiscus, not Hollyhock in several Web pages. Name change???

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
hollyhock

mid-13c., holihoc, from holi "holy" (see holy) + hokke "mallow," from Old English hocc, of unknown origin. Another early name for the plant was caulis Sancti Cuthberti "St. Cuthbert's cole."

Wiktionary
hollyhock

n. Any of several flowering plants of the genus (taxlink Alcea genus noshow=1) in the Malvaceae family.

WordNet
hollyhock
  1. n. any of various plants of the genus Althaea; similar to but having smaller flowers than genus Alcea [syn: althea, althaea]

  2. any of various tall plants of the genus Alcea; native to the Middle East but widely naturalized and cultivated for its very large variously colored flowers

Usage examples of "hollyhock".

From observations which I have made on certain varieties of hollyhock, I am inclined to suspect that they present analogous facts.

Indeed, we should describe Charlottetown as a place where the hollyhock in the dooryard is considered an ornament.

Cyclopean red lamps glared nearer and nearer, and the palpitating monster, so stupendous and so docile, came smoothly to a stand-still before the trelliswork and hollyhocks of that pretty station.

Some old dog woofed a warning from the dungheap near our hives, back among the hollyhock and mimosa.

Near this campsite, Iza found several tall, wandlike, slim-stemmed hollyhocks with large bright flowers.

Creb wandered over while Iza was pouring boiling water over the flowers of the hollyhocks, and sat down near the child.

She stopped at a stand of colorful hollyhocks on long graceful stems and gathered an armful of different hues.

White butterflies and thistledown floated in the air, bees hummed drowsily, and fhe stately hollyhocks swayed slowly back and forth.

Tall along the back end were stalks of something dead that she thought, with a crestfallen heart, might have been hollyhocks in life.

If you have a bishop or an antiquary or something of that sort coming to lunch you just mention the fact when you are ordering the garden, and you get an old-world pleasaunce, with clipped yew hedges and a sun-dial and hollyhocks, and perhaps a mulberry tree, and borders of sweet-williams and Canterbury bells, and an old-fashioned beehive or two tucked away in a corner.

Almira Todd, which stood with its end to the street, appeared to be retired and sheltered enough from the busy world, behind its bushy bit of a green garden, in which all the blooming things, two or three gay hollyhocks and some London-pride, were pushed back against the gray-shingled wall.

Beneath them were borders of mixed traditional cottage garden plants--peonies, hollyhocks, delphiniums, forget-me-nots, which seeded themselves and ran half-wild, aquileas, which did the same thing, producing their pretty pink and white flowers, and catmint, which was invariably flattened by next door's fat ginger tom-cat whom she hadn't the heart to evict from his favourite patch of the scented plant.

We found the damp dirt-floored grotto beneath the verandah, reached by crawling between the hollyhocks, where only spidery dandelions tried to grow, and creeping Charlie, its crushed-mint smell mingling with cat spray and (once) the hot, sick stink of an alarmed garter snake.

Frowning, deadly serious lest he make a mistake, the half-wit loped through town, oblivious to hummingbirds whistling around the abundant hollyhocks, casting knifelike glances at shimmering magpies, recoiling almost in pain whenever turkeys, guinea hens, or geese added their shrill gobbles and honks and squeals to the furious canine cacophony that every morning except Saturday (when the Reporter didn't publish) trailed at his heels wherever he went.

Around him shivered dark peonies, releasing the scent of roses, clumps of iris and hollyhock.