mignonette

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A plant, Reseda odorata, having greyish-green flowers with orange-coloured stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb.

   “After amusing herself for a brief time with picking to pieces some mignonette which filled a box on the window-sill, Marie threw the flowers from her, and exclaimed,—"And here we are seated together, as we used to talk away half the night in Italy. Good Heavens! how we are altered!"”

   “These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s window.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A mignonette tree (Lawsonia inermis), source of the dye henna.
3. (countable, uncountable)A mignonette vine.
4. (countable, uncountable)A greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.
5. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, uncountable)Short for mignonette sauce

adj

1. Of a greyish-green colour, like that of the flowers of the plant.

   “She wore a dishabille of mignonette-green silk and bead-diapered head-dress that added several inches to her height […].”