Talk:dwale

RFV discussion: August–September 2021
The OED's last attestation for the sense "error, delusion" is from around 1350. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 10:08, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 19:45, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May–September 2023
Rfv-sense: "sable" (when tinctures are blazoned as plants). I hate to pick on obscure terms, but ... I think this is the only blazon-by-plants term we have, blazoning by plants was a late and rare invention, and if it was ever used, not just mentioned in a few inconsistent works on heraldry, I haven't been able to find it yet: searching for this + "heraldry" or various likely heraldic terms like "sable" and "gules" isn't finding me anything besides scattered mentions, mostly in other dictionaries, and in those mentions, which plant is which tincture differs. Gerard Legh indeed mentions sable as dwale, but Alexander Nisbet has sable as ducal (which is ... ?a flower?). (A 1922 story by Henry Williamson even speaks floridly of "the shield of the meadow [unblazoned] by gules of poppy, azure of cornflower, or argent of feverfew", differing from Legh's and Nisbet's equation of rose with gules, ranuncula with or, and jasmine with argent ... which is in turn contra our own definition of jasmine [outside heraldry] as yellow.) - -sche (discuss) 17:56, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I assume that the black berries of belladonna somehow figured prominently in the lives of the nobility, as cosmetic, herbal medicine, and poison. Such prominence might explain why it is apparently relatively unambiguous as meaning black, whereas few other well-known plants unambiguously are associated with a single color. Commentators on blazoning note the ambiguity of rose, famously both white and red in heraldry. DCDuring (talk) 15:55, 27 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I managed (to my surprise) to cite a lot of blazon-by-jewels terms, so I tried to apply the same tactics to finding blazon-by-plants books, but no luck. The system does not seem to have ever been used; even Webster, from whom we seem to derive this, dismisses it as fantastical. - -sche (discuss) 20:00, 17 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Deleted Jin and Tonik (talk) 16:57, 5 September 2023 (UTC)