papaverous

comparative more papaverous · superlative most papaverous

1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the poppy.

   The morphology of stamens and carpels of the crucifer flower as well as their anatomy bears testimony to a papaverous ancestry.

   1988, Subhash C. Datta, Systematic Botany, New Age International, →ISBN, page 259

   2 more examples

   Now instead of a smell of Delight our Mandrakes afford a papaverous and unpleasant odor, whether in the leaf or apple, as is discoverable in their simplicity or mixture.

   1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC

   The mountains are dry and brown and so remote that not even helicopters fly overhead, spraying their poison over papaverous hillsides.

   2005, Mack Friedman, Setting the Lawn on Fire, University of Wisconsin Press, →ISBN, page 139

2. figurativelyInducing sleep; soporific.

   He reduced the chaos of Smith to some order, and his style is sufficiently classical, but not the less prolix and papaverous on that account.

   1837 April, “The Tuckahoe”, in Southern Literary Messenger, page 235

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   "Then," said Mr. Eupheme, smiling benevolently, "the papaverous influences of Somnus or Morpheus deprived you of the advantage of ascertaining the modus operandi used in conducting an examination."

   1841, Theodore Hook, editor, Peter Priggins, The College Scout, volume III, Henry Colburn, page 104

   Was it prudently considered that the dullest of critics can read only as long as his eyes are open? and that the function of judge must incessantly bring under his congnisance papaverous volumes, with which only a superhuman endowment of vigilance could hope successfully to contend?

   August 1845, “North's Specimens of the British Critics”, in The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, pages 242–243

   These were sometimes stinging like the preachers at Paul's Cross, often eloquent like Bossuet, and the louder the Doctor's flock snored the greater satisfaction his conscience; indeed it was safest to be hard on them when they were asleep. At any rate he it was probably first diffused in Trinity the papaverous air which still exists there.

   1860, anonymous author, Narragansett; or, The Plantations: A story of 177—, volume II, Chapman and Hall, page 26

   But why are the heaven-bathed souls consumed by the yearning to sleep, to embrace the narcotic, papaverous hymns of Orpheus to Night and Sleep, to leave being for becoming?

   2004, Michael J. B. Allen, “Life as a Dead Platonist”, in Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees, Martin Davies, editors, Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, Brill, published 2002, →ISBN, page 166