columbine

noun

1. Any plant of the genus Aquilegia, having distinctive bell-shaped flowers with spurs on each petal.
2. (slang)An incident in which someone shoots multiple people at a school.

   “Research indicates that many children are afraid of “a Columbine” occurring in their school, or are concerned about other forms of school violence (Aronson, 2000; Garbarino & deLara, 2002; Gaughan et al., 2001; National Association of Attorneys General, 2000).”

   “Granted, I'm not exactly grabbing an ax and going to town or pulling a “Columbine” but the idea of engaging in such activities has crossed my twisted little mind and plagued my black little heart in dreams only.”

   “I remember the second song that played was “Run to the Hills.” I thought my head was going to explode, thinking we were ten minutes away from a Columbine.”

   “You've got people in your schools right now plotting a Columbine.”

   “The suburbs are supposedly where nothing happens, like Auden said about what poetry doesn't do; an overinhabited faux terrain dozing in inertia, occasionally disrupted by “a Columbine” or “an Oklahoma City” or a hurricane to remind us what's really real.”

adj

1. (archaic)Pertaining to a dove or pigeon.

   “Near-synonyms: columboid, peristeronic”

   “It is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent.”

name

1. A census-designated place in Arapahoe County and Jefferson County, Colorado, United States.

   “In 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 12 of their fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives in the school library.”

2. The sweetheart of Harlequin in old pantomimes.

   “The Clown is a London cockney, with a prodigious eye to his own comfort and muffins,—a Lord Mayor's fool, who loved "everything that was good;" and Columbine is the boarding-school girl, ripe for running away with, and making a dance of it all the way from Chelsea to Gretna Green.”