Meaning & use
anemone
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Meanings
nouncountable
A garden or woodland plant with bright, cup-shaped flowers, usually blooming in spring.
Grammar: Often found in the plural: a bed of anemones.
Patterns
- a bed of anemones
- a bunch of anemones
White anemones covered the forest floor in April.
She planted red anemones along the garden path.
A vase of purple anemones stood on the window sill.
nouncountablebiology
A small sea animal that sticks to rocks and has soft, waving tentacles that look like flower petals.
Grammar: Also called a sea anemone; common in rock pools.
Patterns
- a sea anemone
- anemones in a rock pool
The clownfish hides among the stinging anemone.
We saw a green anemone in the rock pool.
An anemone closes its tentacles when touched.
Word forms
| plural | anemones |
|---|
Common combinations
- sea anemone
- A sea anemone clung to the rock at low tide.
- wood anemone
- The wood anemone flowers early in spring.
- Japanese anemone
- Japanese anemones bloom in the autumn garden.
- bunch of anemones
- He bought a bunch of anemones from the market.
- anemone and clownfish
- The anemone and clownfish protect each other.
Synonyms and how they differ
- windflower
- Windflower is another name for the garden plant and is more poetic, but not used for the sea animal.
- polyp
- Polyp is the scientific term for the body form of sea anemones and corals, wider than anemone.
Word family
- sea anemone noun
- the animal that looks like a flower
- anemonefish noun
- a clownfish that lives among anemones
- anemophilous adjective
- pollinated by the wind, from the same Greek root
Commonly confused: anemone or anemia?
anemone vs anemia
Anemia is a medical condition of too few red blood cells, not a flower or sea animal.
Practice
Which syllable is stressed in 'anemone'?
Choose one answer.
The word is pronounced uh-NEM-uh-nee, so the stress falls on the second syllable. Learners often wrongly stress the third syllable.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “anemone”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.