Heather

Meanings

1. 1proper nounproper

   A girl's or woman's first name, taken from the name of a flowering plant.

   Grammar: Capitalized when it is a name: Heather lives next door.

   Patterns

   • Heather and someone

   Heather is meeting us at the station at noon.

   My cousin Heather loves to hike.

   We named our daughter Heather after her great-grandmother.

2. 2noununcountable

   A low evergreen shrub with small purple, pink or white flowers that grows wild on moors and hills.

   Grammar: Written with a small letter when it is the plant: the hills were covered in heather.

   Patterns

   • heather on something

   The hills were purple with blooming heather.

   Bees love to feed on the heather in late summer.

   She picked a sprig of white heather for luck.

Common combinations

purple heather

Purple heather covered the Scottish moor.

wild heather

Wild heather grows on the hillside.

heather honey

Heather honey has a strong, rich flavor.

heather moor

We walked across a heather moor.

heather gray

The sweater came in heather gray.

Synonyms and how they differ

ling

This is the common heather plant, also called Calluna, and is used mostly by botanists and in Britain.

erica

This is the Latin name for another group of heath plants, so it is a technical word.

heath

This is open, wild land covered with low shrubs including heather, rather than the plant itself.

Word family

heathery adjective

covered with heather, or like heather

heath noun

open land with low shrubs such as heather

heathland noun

an area of open land with heather and similar plants

Commonly confused: Heather or weather? Heather or feather?

Practice

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