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A heliotrope is a garden plant with pale purple flowers that smell sweet. People grow it for the scent and the colour. The name, if you take it apart, is 'sun-turn': it came through French and Latin from Greek words for the sun and for a turn, because the plant was thought to turn and face the sun. In English you will also meet heliotrope as a colour — that same pale purple, named after the flower — though the first meaning here is the plant itself. It is a gardener's word, a little old-fashioned and pretty; you would not use it for just any purple flower.
天芥菜（園藝植物；淡紫色小花，很香）
組成Borrowed from French héliotrope, from Latin hēliotropium, from Ancient Greek hēliotropion: hēlios (the sun) + tropos (a turn) + a small-noun ending — 'the plant that turns to the sun'. By the look of the English word, helio- + -trope.
同家族的字
- heliocentricsame helio- piece, from the Greek word for the sun
- tropicthe -trope piece is from the same Greek word for 'a turn' that gives us tropic
原始詞典資料9 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
heliotropenoun/ˈhiː.li.ə.tɹəʊp/
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biologybotanynatural-sciencesA plant with flowers which turn to face and follow the sun, such as (archaic) marigolds and sunflowers.
- In the Opale, there be obſerved alſo divers blemiſhes and imperfections as vvell as in other ſtones; namely, if the colour reſemble the floure of that hearbe vvhich is called Heliotropium, id eſt, Turneſole:[…]
- Lac[o]. Theſe forked tricks, I vnderſtand 'hem not. / VVould he vvould tell vs vvhome he loues, or hates, / That vve might follovv, vvithout feare, or doubt. / Arr[untius]. Good Heliotrope! Is this your honeſt man? / Let him be yours ſo ſtill. He is my knaue.
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biologybotanynatural-sciencesA plant with flowers which turn to face and follow the sun, such as (archaic) marigolds and sunflowers.
- As they entered now, it seemed a blaze of roses and carnations, though one recognised in a moment the presence of the lily, the heliotrope, and the stock.
- Here's newyearspray, the posquiflor, a windaborne and heliotrope; there miriamsweet and amaranth and marygold to crown.
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biologybotanynatural-sciencesA plant with flowers which turn to face and follow the sun, such as (archaic) marigolds and sunflowers.
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The fragrance of Heliotropium arborescens flowers, or a scent resembling this fragrance.
- He had lost his affable smile, and wore a look of almost military resolution; […] he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of gunpowder.
- Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he hurled it to the floor.
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A light purple or violet colour like that of Heliotropium arborescens flowers.
- Kit woke to see looming over him the face of Dr. Willi Dingkopf, framed by a haircut in violation of more than one law of physics, and a vivid necktie in fuchsia, heliotrope, and duck green, a gift from one of the patients, […]
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An instrument that uses a mirror to reflect sunlight for purposes such as signalling, or (surveying) triangulation (where the reflected light is detected by another surveyor positioned some distance away).
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historicalAn ancient type of sundial consisting of a bowl with a perpendicular gnomon mounted in the centre.
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chemistrygeographygeologySynonym of bloodstone (“a green chalcedony that is sprinkled with red spots or veins of hematite”).
- The pretious ſtone Heliotropium, is found in Æthiopia, Affricke, and Cyprus: the ground thereof is a deepe greene in manner of a leeke, but the ſame is garniſhed vvith veins of bloud: the reaſon of the name Heliotropium is this, For that if it be throvvne into a paile of vvater, it chaungeth the raies of the Sun by vvay of reverberation into a bloudie colour, eſpecially that vvhich commeth out of Æthiopia: the ſame beeing vvithout the vvater, doth repreſent the bodie of the Sun, like unto a mirroir:[…]
- Amid this dread exuberance of woe / Ran naked spirits wing'd with horrid fear, / Nor hope had they of crevice where to hide, / Or heliotrope to charm them out of view.
heliotropeadj/ˈhiː.li.ə.tɹəʊp/
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Of a light purple or violet colour like that of Heliotropium arborescens flowers.
- "Lady in a heliotrope dress with a lace collar, three flounces on the skirt?" / "That's right, Mr. Bennett," agreed old Goslin. / "It's the Babe himself!" asserted Harry Bennett.
- There was a ten-mile stretch of level ground, blown hard as rock, from which the sustenance had been bleached, for not a spear of grass grew there. And following that was a tortuous passage through a weird region of clay dunes, blue and violet and heliotrope and lavender, all worn smooth by rain and wind.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。