"pertaining to or resembling the poppy," 1640s, from Latin papaver "poppy" (see poppy) + -ous.
Entries linking to papaverous
poppy n.
plant of the genus papaver, having showy flowers and milky juice with narcotic properties, from late Old English popig, popæg, from West Germanic *papua-, probably from Vulgar Latin *papavum, from Latin papaver "poppy," perhaps a reduplicated form of imitative root *pap- "to swell."
Associated with battlefields and war dead at least since Waterloo (1815), an association cemented by John McCrae's World War I poem, they do not typically grow well in the soil of Flanders but were said to have been noticeably abundant on the mass graves of the fallen French after 1815, no doubt nourished by the nutriments below. Poppy-seed is from early 15c.; in 17c. it also was a small unit of length (less than one-twelfth of an inch).
-ous
word-forming element making adjectives from nouns, meaning "having, full of, having to do with, doing, inclined to," from Old French -ous, -eux, from Latin -osus (compare -ose (1)). In chemistry, "having a lower valence than forms expressed in -ic."