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Webster 1913 Edition
Tulipomania
Tuˊlip-o-ma′ni-a
,Noun.
[
Tulip
+ mania
.] A violent passion for the acquisition or cultivation of tulips; – a word said by Beckman to have been coined by Menage.
☞ In Holland, in the first half of the 17th century, the cultivation of tulips became a mania. It began about the year 1634, and, like a violent epidemic, seized upon all classes of the community, leading to disasters and misery such as the records of commerce or of bankruptcies can scarcely parallel. In 1636, tulip marts had been established in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, and various other towns, where tulip bulbs were sold and resold in the same manner as stocks are on the Stock Exchange of London.
Baird.
Definition 2024
tulipomania
tulipomania
English
Noun
tulipomania (uncountable)
- Enthusiasm for tulips, as in a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed.
- 1989, Stanford M. Lyman, The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil, p. 250.
- Certainly one of the best illustrations of the fantastic in the motley variety of items that avarice might seize for its own is the tulipomania that swept over the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
- 2014 September 26, Charles Quest-Ritson, “The Dutch garden where tulip bulbs live forever: Hortus Bulborum, a volunteer-run Dutch garden, is dedicated to conserving historic varieties before they vanish for good [print version: Inspired by a living bulb archive, 27 September 2014, p. G5]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Gardening):
- [I]n 1646, during the phenomenon known as "Tulipomania", a tulip like the red and white 'Admirael van der Eijck', or the purple-splashed 'Generalen van Gouda' would sell for more than 1,000 Dutch florins, at a time when the average annual income of a skilled worker was about 300 florins.
- 1989, Stanford M. Lyman, The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil, p. 250.
Derived terms
Translations
enthusiasm for tulips, as in a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed
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