oleaster
(əʊliːˈæstə(r))
Also 5 oli-.
[a. L. oleaster, f. olea olive-tree: see -aster.]
a. The true Wild Olive (Olea Oleaster), the wild variety (or sub-species) of the cultivated Olive, with more or less thorny branches and small worthless fruit. b. A small tree of the genus Elæagnus, a native of southern Europe and some parts of Asia, somewhat resembling the preceding, with abundance of fragrant yellow flowers, and reddish-brown inedible fruit; also called wild olive.
| [c 1000 Sax. Leechd. II. 90 Gecnuwa lufestice & ellenrinde & oleastrum, þæt is, wilde elebeam.] 1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. xvii. cxiii. (1495) 676 Oliaster is a wilde oliue tree and hath that name for he is lyke to the oliue tree: but the leues thereof ben broder and this tree is bareyne and bytter and not tilthed. c 1420 Pallad. on Husb. iv. 115 Bareyn yf thin oliaster be. 1671 Salmon Syn. Med. iii. xxii. 414. 1731–3 Miller Gard. Dict. s.v. Olea, The Oleaster is very hardy, and will endure the severest Cold of our Climate..This will grow to the Height of sixteen or eighteen Feet..During the Season of its Flowering, (which is in June) it perfumes the circumambient Air to a great Distance. 1855 Singleton Virgil I. 185 Let the palm Or a huge oleaster th' outer court O'ershadow. 1874 Farrar Christ (1881) 212 He had found in the oleaster what He had not found in the olive. |
Hence † oleˈastral, -ial a. Obs., pertaining to a wild olive (with allusion to Rom. xi. 17).
| 1600 W. Watson Decacordon (1602) 81 Seditious factions, and vnnaturall dispositions, sprong out of oleastriall graffes amongst us. |