yarrow

plural yarrows

1. uncountableusuallyAny of several pungent Eurasian and North American herbs, of the genus Achillea, used in traditional herbal medicine.

   Yarrow is one of the aboriginal English plants, and from time immemorial it has been used in incantations and by witches. Country folk still regard it as one of our most valuable herbs, especially for rheumatism.

   1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, Longmans, Green and Co.

2. uncountableusuallyCommon yarrow, Achillea millefolium, the type species of the genus.

   The Yarrow, where-with-all he stops the wound-made gore:

   1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 13 p. 218

   1 more example

   “Oh, yarrow! This is it,” she said, extracting a single long stemmed ferny grass with clusters of small white flowers from the bouquet in her hand.

   1979, Victor Kaplan, The Woman who Gathered Yarrow; The Box; Miss Vesey's Other Leg, →ISBN, page 11

   Synonyms: devil's nettle, sanguinary, soldier's woundwort, thousand-leaf

plural yarrows

1. UKA green woodpecker, of species Picus viridis.

   Synonyms: achillea, milfoil, devil's nettle, sanguinary, soldier's woundwort, thousand-leaf

1. A river in Lancashire, England, which flows into the River Douglas.
2. A river, named Yarrow Water, in Scottish Borders council area, Scotland.
3. A hamlet and parish in the Yarrow Valley, Scottish Borders council area (OS grid ref NT3527).
4. A hamlet in Mark parish, Somerset, England, previously in Sedgemoor district (OS grid ref ST3847).
5. A small community in British Columbia, Canada.
6. An unincorporated community in Missouri, United States.
7. A locality in the Queanbeyan-Palerang council area, south eastern New South Wales, Australia.
8. A surname.

   In comments to Hyperallergic, ancient historian and classical numismatist Liv Yarrow noted the absence of SPQR coins during the period of the Republic and its later use as a means of justifying autocracy while harkening back to an earlier age:

   2018 August 30, Sarah E. Bond, “The Misuse of an Ancient Roman Acronym by White Nationalist Groups”, in Hyperallergic