vanessa
/vəˈnɛsə/ noun, proper noun
Forms vanessas
- noun (zoology) Any butterfly of the genus Vanessa.
- proper noun A female given name originating as a coinage.
Synonyms
Etymology
From the genus name.
Coined by Jonathan Swift in the 18th century as a pseudonym for a lady friend named Esther Vanhomrigh (or Van Homrigh), an Irish woman of Dutch descent, by taking the Dutch preposition van from her surname and adding -essa (perhaps influenced by the first syllable of Esther).
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any one of numerous species of handsomely colored butterflies belonging to Vanessa and allied genera. Many of these species have the edges of the wings irregularly scalloped.
Etymology [Probably from Swift's poem of Cadenus and Vanessa. See Vanessa, in the Dictionary of Noted Names in Fiction.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “vanessa”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details