What it doesn't mean
Greenaway gives four violets four meanings, and Dumont uses two different wordings for the same flower in one book.
The phrase appears in literal use by 1820 and as an idiom for a very shy person from the early 19th century, possibly from the flower's small, inconspicuous habit.
What it really means
Ask the Victorian flower books what a violet means and the answer is some version of modesty.
Kate Greenaway's illustrated Language of Flowers, published by Routledge in 1884 and free on Project Gutenberg, lists four violets. The sweet violet is "Modesty". The blue violet is "Faithfulness". The dame violet is "Watchfulness", and the yellow violet, rather charmingly, "Rural happiness". Henrietta Dumont's American Language of Flowers of 1851 gives the violet as "Modest worth" in her chapter on it, then shortens it to "Modesty" in her word list. Even inside one book, the wording moved.
Modesty suits the plant: violets are small, low and easy to miss in the grass. English turned that picture into an idiom. Leigh Hunt wrote of "a shrinking violet" in a literal sense in 1820, and from the early nineteenth century the phrase was also used of very shy people. Today it is most often used in the negative: someone confident is "no shrinking violet".
The violet's history goes back much further than the Victorians. In ancient Greece it was a favourite flower and became a symbol of Athens. And the flower gave English a colour: "violet" as a colour name grew out of the flower's name in the late fourteenth century, which is why the same word now names a plant, a shade and, occasionally, a person.
As with every flower here, these meanings belong to particular books and traditions rather than to the flower itself. The historian Beverly Seaton has shown that the floral dictionaries never agreed on one code.
Where it comes from
Old French — violet
Latin — the violet; a violet colour
From Old French violete, a diminutive of viole, from Latin viola. The colour name grew out of the flower's name in the late 14th century.
- Ancient Greece
The violet is a favourite flower and becomes a symbol of Athens.
- 1820
Leigh Hunt writes of 'a shrinking violet' in a literal sense; the phrase later comes to mean a very shy person.
- 1851
Dumont gives the violet as 'Modest worth' in her chapter and 'Modesty' in her word list.
- 1884
Greenaway lists four violets: blue 'Faithfulness', dame 'Watchfulness', sweet 'Modesty', yellow 'Rural happiness'.
In real life
- A posy of sweet violets, in Greenaway's code, praised the receiver's modesty.
- He was no shrinking violet: he introduced himself to the whole room.
- Dumont's 1851 book calls the violet 'Modest worth' in one place and 'Modesty' in another.
Questions
Q01What does a violet mean in the language of flowers?
Modesty. Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers (1884) gives the sweet violet as 'Modesty', and Henrietta Dumont's 1851 book gives 'Modest worth'. Greenaway's blue violet means 'Faithfulness'.
Q02What do the different violets mean?
In Greenaway's 1884 list: blue violet, 'Faithfulness'; dame violet, 'Watchfulness'; sweet violet, 'Modesty'; yellow violet, 'Rural happiness'.
Q03Why is a shy person called a shrinking violet?
Possibly because the violet is a small flower that grows low and half-hidden. The phrase appears in a literal sense by 1820, in Leigh Hunt, and is used of shy people from the early 19th century; it is often used in the negative, as in 'no shrinking violet'.
Sources
- Kate Greenaway (illustrator), Language of Flowers (Routledge, 1884) — Project Gutenberg.
- Henrietta Dumont, The Language of Flowers (Philadelphia, 1851) — Project Gutenberg.
- violet (etymology) — Online Etymology Dictionary.
- shrinking violet — Wiktionary.
- Viola odorata — Wikipedia.
- Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History — University of Virginia Press.