Polyphyllous

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Bearing a large number of leaves, or having a foliage made up of many separate leaflets or leaf-like parts
2. Describing a plant or structure that possesses numerous leaves rather than only a few
3. Characterized by having many leaves, as in botanical descriptions of certain plants and their parts

Etymology: "Polyphyllous" is a plain compound built from two Greek elements. "Poly-" comes from Greek "polys," meaning "many," and "-phyllous" comes from "phullon," meaning "leaf," with the adjectival suffix "-ous" added in English. Put together, the word describes a plant or structure bearing many leaves, as opposed to one with only a few. The pattern is a familiar one in botany. English naturalists regularly built descriptive terms from Greek roots, so "polyphyllous" sits alongside related coinages such as "monophyllous," for a single leaf, and "diphyllous," for two. The word belongs to the technical vocabulary of plant description rather than everyday speech, and its meaning follows directly from its parts.

Antonyms: monophyllous