"vanessa" meaning in English

See vanessa in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: vanessas [plural]
Etymology: From the genus name. Head templates: {{en-noun}} vanessa (plural vanessas)
  1. (zoology) Any butterfly of the genus Vanessa.

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_text": "From the genus name.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "vanessas",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "vanessa (plural vanessas)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 2 entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Nymphalid butterflies",
          "orig": "en:Nymphalid butterflies",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Zoology",
          "orig": "en:Zoology",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              199,
              207
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 438:",
          "text": "The Nymphalidae are a very extensive group, of generally strong-winged and very bright-coloured butterflies, very abundant in the tropics, and represented in our own country by our Fritillaries, our Vanessas, and our Purple-emperor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Any butterfly of the genus Vanessa."
      ],
      "id": "en-vanessa-en-noun-jSUDb1pV",
      "links": [
        [
          "zoology",
          "zoology"
        ],
        [
          "butterfly",
          "butterfly"
        ],
        [
          "genus",
          "genus"
        ],
        [
          "Vanessa",
          "Vanessa"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(zoology) Any butterfly of the genus Vanessa."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "biology",
        "natural-sciences",
        "zoology"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "vanessa"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the genus name.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "vanessas",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "vanessa (plural vanessas)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 2 entries",
        "Pages with entries",
        "en:Nymphalid butterflies",
        "en:Zoology"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              199,
              207
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 438:",
          "text": "The Nymphalidae are a very extensive group, of generally strong-winged and very bright-coloured butterflies, very abundant in the tropics, and represented in our own country by our Fritillaries, our Vanessas, and our Purple-emperor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Any butterfly of the genus Vanessa."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "zoology",
          "zoology"
        ],
        [
          "butterfly",
          "butterfly"
        ],
        [
          "genus",
          "genus"
        ],
        [
          "Vanessa",
          "Vanessa"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(zoology) Any butterfly of the genus Vanessa."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "biology",
        "natural-sciences",
        "zoology"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "vanessa"
}

Download raw JSONL data for vanessa meaning in English (1.2kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-10-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (1a05e46 and e3d6d4e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.