estival

comparative more estival · superlative most estival · alternative aestival · alternative archaic æstival

1. Of or relating to summer.

   1 more example

   A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto, a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually; the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk; the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

   1938, James Agee, Knoxville: Summer of 1915

   Synonyms: summery, summer · Antonyms: hibernal, brumal, winter, wintry

2. Coming forth in the summer.

   To the first or aestival class must also be referred a small number of early spring flowerers, such as the Alyssums and Drabas.

   1880, Rugby School, “Report of the Rugby School Natural History Society”, in Natural History, Society, page 5

   4 more examples

   […] begin now to redden in abundance on the trees, and continue throughout the month, and part of the next; more particulars of which will be found in our catalogue of aestival fruits. The birds now begin to be very active in devouring the fruits, ...

   1824, Thomas Forster, The Perennial Calendar, and Companion to the Almanack, page 328

   Thalictrum purpurascens. Lactuca pulchella. Verbena stricta. The estival period begins about the tenth of June, and is characterized by the rapid diminution of the vernal bloomers rather than by the addition of the important estival flowers .

   1892, Contribution[s] from the Botanical Survey of Nebraska, page 72

   On the other hand, many tropical flowers and a large number of estival flowers of temperate climates have more specialized structures, their nectar supply being hidden in spurs or at the base of long corolla tubes.

   1911, John Merle Coulter, Henry Chandler Cowles, Ecology, page 843

   […] were basking near men-of-the-earth (always a morning glory) and kiss-mes and kiss-me-quicks where she was sure to contract spring fever, vulnerable as she with her romanticist heart was to get it now that estival flowers […]

   2009, William Penn, Love in the Time of Flowers, Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, page 754