HEATH

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does heath mean? 

• HEATH (noun)
  The noun HEATH has 2 senses:

1. a low evergreen shrub of the family Ericaceae; has small bell-shaped pink or purple flowers

2. a tract of level wasteland; uncultivated land with sandy soil and scrubby vegetation

  Familiarity information: HEATH used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HEATH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A low evergreen shrub of the family Ericaceae; has small bell-shaped pink or purple flowers

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Hypernyms ("heath" is a kind of...):

bush; shrub (a low woody perennial plant usually having several major stems)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "heath"):

erica; true heath (any plant of the genus Erica)

Bruckenthalia spiculifolia; spike heath (small evergreen mat-forming shrub of southern Europe and Asia Minor having stiff stems and terminal clusters of small bell-shaped flowers)

broom; Calluna vulgaris; heather; ling; Scots heather (common Old World heath represented by many varieties; low evergreen grown widely in the northern hemisphere)

Cassiope mertensiana; white heather (heath of mountains of western United States having bell-shaped white flowers)

Connemara heath; Daboecia cantabrica; St. Dabeoc's heath (low straggling evergreen shrub of western Europe represented by several varieties with flowers from white to rose-purple)

Bryanthus taxifolius; mountain heath; Phyllodoce caerulea (small shrub with tiny evergreen leaves and pink or purple flowers; Alpine summits and high ground in Asia and Europe and United States)

Brewer's mountain heather; Phyllodoce breweri; purple heather (semi-prostrate evergreen herb of western United States)

Holonyms ("heath" is a member of...):

Ericaceae; family Ericaceae; heath family (heathers)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A tract of level wasteland; uncultivated land with sandy soil and scrubby vegetation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

heath; heathland

Hypernyms ("heath" is a kind of...):

barren; waste; wasteland (an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation)

Domain region:

Britain; Great Britain; U.K.; UK; United Kingdom; United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (a monarchy in northwestern Europe occupying most of the British Isles; divided into England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland; 'Great Britain' is often used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom)

 Context examples 

It showed no variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore only heath.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I passed the night under the shelter of a rock, strewing some heath under me, and slept pretty well.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I ran across the heath and peered through the trees.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The road led them across a heath upon which huge pieces of rock lay strewn about.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

As they advanced, the path still tended upwards, running from heath into copses of holly and yew, and so back into heath again.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My dear, it is only a beautiful little heath, which that nice old gardener would make me take; but if it is in your way, I will have it in my lap directly.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I have dwelt many months in the heaths of England and among the deserts of Scotland.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The mail picked us up about dusk at the Royal George on the heath.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

On Monday next, on the arrival of the four o'clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my native heath—my name, Micawber!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)