elder-blow
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English[edit]
Noun[edit]
elder-blow (countable and uncountable, plural elder-blows)
- (US) The edible flower clusters (umbels) of the elder tree (Sambucus nigra).
- 1838, Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, New York: Samuel S. & William Wood, 22nd edition, enlarged, p. 27,[1]
- A poultice of elder-blow tea and biscuit is good as a preventive to mortification.
- 1845, Sylvester Judd, Margaret[2], Boston: Jordan and Wiley, Part 2, Chapter 5, p. 274:
- I wouldn’t tech it sooner a cow’d eat elder blows.
- 1876, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Poetry and Imagination”, in Letters and Social Aims[3], Boston: James R. Osgood, page 33:
- What are his [the writer’s] garland and singing robes? What but a sensibility so keen that the scent of an elder-blow, or the timber-yard and corporation-works of a nest of pismires is event enough for him,—all emblems and personal appeals to him.
- 1893, Louise Imogen Guiney, “Peter Rugg the Bostonian”, in A Roadside Harp,[4], Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 2:
- […] the long highway broidered thick
With elder-blow and rose;
- 1918, Willa Cather, chapter 14, in My Antonia[5], Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 265:
- […] the elder was all in bloom now; and Anna wanted to make elder-blow wine.
- 1989, Cathy Johnson, The Nocturnal Naturalist: Exploring the Outdoors at Night[6], Chester, CT: Globe Pequot Press, page 42:
- Elderflowers glow like incandescent seafoam in the darkness. They, too, are good to eat. We make a fine tea of them to serve with elder blow fritters on the deck at night.
- 1838, Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, New York: Samuel S. & William Wood, 22nd edition, enlarged, p. 27,[1]