Lavender is the grey-green bush with tall spikes of small purple flowers that grows along garden paths in summer, loud with bees. Rub a flower head between your fingers and the smell stays on your skin; dried, it goes into little bags in the wardrobe to keep the moths away.
The colour took the plant's name, so lavender is a pale purple with grey in it, and lavender walls or a lavender shirt mean exactly that shade. It is the standard scent of soap and oil and everything sold to help you sleep — lavender oil, lavender water, lavender honey. The plant is Mediterranean, which is why the famous photographs are of purple fields in Provence, and why in a garden it wants sun, thin soil and a hard cut back after flowering. Note that it behaves like a mass, not a countable bloom: you buy lavender or a bunch of lavender, not three lavenders.
1nounlavenderA low bush with narrow grey-green leaves and spikes of small purple flowers, grown for its scent.
“She planted lavender all along the front path.”
2nounpaleA pale purple colour with grey in it.
“The bedroom walls were painted a soft lavender.”
3adjectivecolourOf a pale greyish purple colour.
“He wore a lavender tie to the wedding.”
Lavender came through Middle English lavendre from Anglo-Norman, and behind that Medieval Latin lavendula. The Latin may go back to lividus, 'bluish', which fits the colour well enough. But the shape of the word was pulled towards lavo, 'to wash', because lavender was packed in with the laundry — so the name carries a hint of washday whichever way it started.
Middle English
lavendre
English, today
lavender
Built from
From Middle English lavendre. From Middle English lavendre, from Anglo-Norman lavendre (French lavande), from Medieval Latin lavendula, possibly from Latin lividus (“bluish”), but influenced by lavō (“to wash”) due to the use of lavender in washing clothes.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA