cashew
/ˈkæʃuː/ noun
Forms cashews
- noun Any tree of the genus Anacardium.
- noun A tree, Anacardium occidentale, native to northeastern Brazil, now widely grown in tropical climates for its cashew nuts and cashew apples.
- noun A cashew nut.
Synonyms
Etymology
Reanalysis of French acajou as a + cajou, from Old Tupi akaîu. Doublet of acajou.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A tree (Anacardium occidentale) of the same family which the sumac. It is native in tropical America, but is now naturalized in all tropical countries. Its fruit, a kidney-shaped nut, grows at the extremity of an edible, pear-shaped hypocarp, about three inches long. Casbew nut, the large, kidney-shaped fruit of the cashew, which is edible after the caustic oil has been expelled from the shell by roasting the nut.
Etymology [F. acajou, for cajou, prob. from Malay kayu tree; cf. Pg. acaju, cf. Acajou.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “cashew”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details