Other forms: carnations
A carnation is a frilled flower with a clove-like scent, worn in buttonholes. A white carnation, a buttonhole carnation, a bunch of carnations.
Most of the ones sold have had the scent bred out in favour of long life in a vase, which is a real loss. In several countries a red one is the flower of labour movements. The name may come from the Latin for flesh, after the original colour.
1nouncarnationA frilled flower with a clove-like scent.
“He wore a white carnation in his buttonhole at the wedding.”
carnation is a flower.
Middle French carnation means flesh colour, from Latin caro, flesh. The name came from the original pink shade.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker-
Latin
carnātiō — fleshiness
Italian
carnagione — flesh color
Middle French
carnation — flesh color, complexion
English, today
carnation
Built from
From Middle French carnation (“flesh color, complexion”), either via Italian carnagione (“flesh color”) or directly from Latin carnātiō (“fleshiness”), from Latin carō (“flesh, meat”) + -atio (“-ation”). As a flower and its color, possibly instead from corruption in French of coronation (“crowning, crowned thing”) under the influence of carnation, from the flower's supposed resemblance to a crown. by surface analysis, carn- + -ate + -ion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA