woodbine

American  

[wood-bahyn] / ˈwʊdˌbaɪn /

noun

1. any of several climbing vines, especially those of genera Lonicera of the honeysuckle family and Parthenocissus of the grape family.

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woodbine British  

/ ˈwuːdˌbaɪn /

noun

1. a honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, of Europe, SW Asia, and N Africa, having fragrant creamy flowers

2. a related North American plant, L. caprifolium

3. another name for Virginia creeper

4. obsolete an Englishman

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Etymology

Origin of woodbine

First recorded before 900; Middle English wodebind(e), Old English wudubind, wudebinde, equivalent to wudu “wood” + bind “binding”; wood ¹, bind

Example Sentences

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: .

From Time Magazine Archive

Cool and resourceful, she "smells out money like a honey bee smells out woodbine."

From Time Magazine Archive

It is on the stalk of the woodbine which climbs up the hawthorn, and is the first in the new year—in the very darkest and blackest days—to show that life is stirring.

From Wild Life in a Southern County by Jefferies, Richard

But bide a bit till the hawthorn bloom, and anon thy walls put on their kirtle of brave roses, and sweet woodbine.

From The Cloister and the Hearth A Tale of the Middle Ages by Reade, Charles

Its beauty, when seen draped in ivy and woodbine, clustering so thickly as to screen its gray walls from view, is at least not apocryphal.

From Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast by Drake, Samuel Adams