hothouse plant

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

He need not be a diseased oyster or a frail hothouse plant or an emotional prairie fire that scorches the earth searching for truth.

From Time Magazine Archive

Here is a foreign hothouse plant, too tender for the gardens of the North.

From Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)

Mrs Wititterly is of a very excitable nature; very delicate, very fragile; a hothouse plant, an exotic.'

From Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens, Charles

But industry is not of the nature of a hothouse plant, to be forced by artificial means; and these grants of funds have but created monopolies, and consequently added to the general poverty.

From Life in Mexico by Calderón de la Barca, Madame (Frances Erskine Inglis)

He imagines himself to be in love with the pastor's daughter in the village, who has been brought up like a hothouse plant.

From Essays on Modern Novelists by Phelps, William Lyon