yucca
/ˈjʌkə/ noun, proper noun
Forms yuccas
- noun Any of several evergreen plants of the genus Yucca, having long, pointed, and rigid leaves at the top of a woody stem, and bearing a large panicle of showy white blossoms.
- noun (now proscribed, obsolete) The yuca (cassava).
- proper noun An unincorporated community and census-designated place in Mohave County, Arizona, United States.
Synonyms
Etymology
Variant of yuca, sometimes said to be from Kari'na yuca (“cassava (Manihot esculenta)”), but this latter appears to be a ghost word. The word was applied to plants of the genus Yucca (now the main sense), because Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and others confused them with the cassava.
Webster’s 1913
- noun See Flicker, n., 2.
- noun A genus of American liliaceous, sometimes arborescent, plants having long, pointed, and often rigid, leaves at the top of a more or less woody stem, and bearing a large panicle of showy white blossoms.
Etymology [NL., from Yuca, its name in St. Domingo.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “yucca”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details