sundew
noun
sundew is a noun meaning “Any of a group of insectivorous plants in the genus Drosera that catch insects by sticky droplets ("dew") at the end of hairs on the leaves and grow…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-U-N-D-E-W, and it appears about once in every 25 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sundew is sundews.
What does sundew mean?
noun
- 1
Any of a group of insectivorous plants in the genus Drosera that catch insects by sticky droplets ("dew") at the end of hairs on the leaves and grow in boggy ground all over the world.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce sundew?
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-sundew.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of sundew
- sundews plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sundew?
Sundew appears about once in every 25 million words in written English, the 150,355th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Sundew in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense group of insectivorous plants:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | droséra, rossolis |
| German | Sonnentau |
| Portuguese | drósera |
| Spanish | rocío del sol |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does sundew come from?
From sun + dew. Cognate with Dutch zonnedauw, Icelandic sóldögg, German Sonnentau.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).