trifolium

See also: Trifolium

English

From the genus name.

trifolium (plural trifoliums or trifolia)

(botany) Any of the genus Trifolium of clovers and trefoils.
- 1867, Wilson Flagg, “The Early Wild Flowers”, in The Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries, page 155:
  The larger species (Panax quinquefolium) is rather coarse and ordinary in its appearance; the flowers are very nearly like those of the trifolia, but grow in an irregular and elongated cluster.
- 2012, Douglas M. Considine, Foods and Food Production Encyclopedia, page 441:
  The majority of the trifoliums are native to Europe and Asia. Only comparatively few of the trifoliums native to the United States are of food production significance.

From tria (“three”) + folium (“a leaf”), a calque of Ancient Greek τρίφυλλον (tríphullon).

trifolium n (genitive trifoliī or trifolī); second declension

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

“trifolium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
trifolium in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
trifolium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.