A Word A Day — scarlet pimpernel
- scarlet pimpernel
-
- \SKAHR-lut-PIM-per-nel\
- DEFINITION
noun
- EXAMPLES
The refugees will always be grateful to the scarlet pimpernels who saved their lives by getting them out of the country ahead of the death squads.
"The scarlet pimpernel plant also disguises itself, albeit in a reverse sort of way. It appears to be the most docile and friendly of plants yet it contains toxins and its digestion by grazing animals may cause their death.." — From a column by Joshua Siskin in The Daily News of Los Angeles, June 2, 2012
- DID YOU KNOW?
In 1903, Hungarian-born playwright and novelist Baroness Emmuska Orczy introduced the world to Sir Percy Blakeney, ostensibly a foppish English aristocrat, but secretly a swashbuckling hero known as "The Scarlet Pimpernel" who rescued aristocrats from certain death in the French Revolution by smuggling them to England. In The Scarlet Pimpernel, Blakeney's character used a drawing of a small, red, star-shaped flower known in England as a "scarlet pimpernel" as a signature of his involvement in an escape. The popularity of Orczy's novel prompted English speakers to start using "scarlet pimpernel" for any daring hero who smuggled those in danger to a safe haven in another country. Today it is also sometimes used more broadly for a person who is daring, mysterious, or evasive.
From Merriam-Webster Online at www.Merriam-Webster.com.