Milk thistle Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun any of several Old World coarse prickly-leaved shrubs and subshrubs having milky juice and yellow flowers; widely naturalized; often noxious weeds in cultivated soil
    sow thistle.
  2. noun tall Old World biennial thistle with large clasping white-blotched leaves and purple flower heads; naturalized in California and South America
    Silybum marianum; holy thistle; lady's thistle; Our Lady's mild thistle; blessed thistle.

WordNet


Definitions
  1. (Bot.), an esculent European thistle (Silybum marianum), having the veins of its leaves of a milky whiteness.

Webster 1913