Triffid
Entry updated 13 April 2020. Tagged: Character, Theme.
Well-known Term denoting the ambulant, Poison-stinging, vegetable Monsters which harass the mostly blinded remnants of humanity in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (6 January-3 February 1951 Collier's Weekly; as "Revolt of the Triffids"; 1951; rev 1951; orig version vt Revolt of the Triffids 1952), filmed as The Day of the Triffids (1963) and adapted as the BBC TV serial The Day of the Triffids (1981). In the novel, triffids seem to possess some form of dim Hive-Mind intelligence, a point echoed in Simon Clark's not entirely satisfactory Sequel by Another Hand, The Night of the Triffids (2001). The word itself has entered the English language as a generic name for any unidentified plant or weed sufficiently large or prolific to be considered – usually jokily – as menacing. [DRL]
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