Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A fleshy fruit, such as a peach, plum, or cherry, usually having a single hard stone that encloses a seed. Also called stone fruit.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In botany, a stone-fruit; a fruit in which the outer part of the pericarp becomes fleshy or softens like a berry, while the inner hardens like a nut, forming a stone with a kernel, as the plum, cherry, apricot, and peach. The stone inclosing the kernel is called the putamen (or endocarp), while the pulpy or more succulent part is called the sarcocarp (or mesocarp), and the outer covering the epi-carp. The true drupe consists of a single one-celled and usually one-seeded Carpel, but the term is applied to similar fruits resulting from a compound pistil, in which there may be several separate or separable putamens. Many small drupes, like the huckleberry, are in ordinary usage classed with berries. On the other hand, some drupe-like fruits, as that of the hawthorn, are technically referred to the pome, and the cocoanut and walnut, being intermediate between a nut and a drupe, are described as drupaceous nuts.
Wiktionary
- n. A stone fruit.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A fruit consisting of pulpy, coriaceous, or fibrous exocarp, without valves, containing a nut or stone with a kernel. The exocarp is succulent in the plum, cherry, apricot, peach, etc.; dry and subcoriaceous in the almond; and fibrous in the cocoanut.
WordNet 3.0
- n. fleshy indehiscent fruit with a single seed: e.g. almond; peach; plum; cherry; elderberry; olive; jujube.
Etymologies
- Scientific Latin, from Latin drūpa, from Ancient Greek δρύππᾱ. (Wiktionary)
- Latin drūpa, druppa, overripe olive, from Greek druppā, olive, possibly alteration of drupepēs, ripened on the tree : drūs, dru-, tree; see deru- in Indo-European roots + peptein, pep-, to ripen; see pekw- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“From wikipedia: In botany, a drupe is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit or stone) of hardened endocarp with a seed inside.”
“It is, however, not the product "turpentine" that is most esteemed by the natives, but the fruit of the tree, a kind of drupe disposed in clusters.”
“Its leaves are shaped like spear-heads; the fruit is a kind of drupe, clothed in fleshy scales.”
“Leaving aside the invidious choices to be made between hesperidia, cucurbitaceae, and drupes — I am a drupe man — and, thence, between apricots, nectarines, mangoes, plums, and peaches, I find there is simply no adequate counter-argument.”
“She pricked her hand on the rusty daglet, and I saw a drupe of blood, red as a cherry, swell on her pall.”
“Yesterday, I woke in the middle of a dream about the cherry liqueur described by the protagonist Framboise in the book Five Quarters of the Orange *: eventually, the alcohol seeps through the drupe to penetrate the stone, drawing out the scent of almonds, she explains.”
“Regarding M.E.M. ... umm, I think that pistachios are a drupe or something, or maybe a nut, but I'm pretty sure they're not a fruit.”
“The root of that roundish fleshy drupe we call a plum is the Latin prunum.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“They are the stone of a drupe, the fruit of Cocos nucifera, large to 100 ft/30 m tree-like palms that are more closely related to the grasses than to other nut trees.”
Simon & Schuster: On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
“Each drupe contains an oblong oval kernel, pleasant to the taste, but so trivial in size as to be hardly worth the trouble of extraction unless there is little else to occupy attention save the pangs of hunger.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘drupe’.
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A Galimafrée of Plant Anatomy & Morph...
A hodgepodge, jumble, jambalaya, *gallimaufry, circus and tent revival of plant anatomy and morphology terms and phrases - its a big tent, and no tickets are required.
*array, collecti...naked bud, leaf blade, brochidodromous, serrate, cork cambium, rhizomatous, flower stalk, deciduous sepal, petal, whorl, nectar gland, stamen and 1348 more...
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Kalli's Words
redundant, munchkin, escapade, natch, boom, fap, geek, nocturnal, pedantic, tactile, conversant, oxymoron and 188 more...
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difficult words
ordure, tatterwallop, callipygian, odious, colophon, cynosure, hardener, emollience, valetudinarian, demonym, volage, polysemantic and 256 more...
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Foodie
As much fun to say as they are to eat.
blueberry, cider, almond, apricot, asparagus, banana, fudge, foldover, flapjacks, filbert, fig, biscuit and 217 more...
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euphonic logorrhea
cephalopodous, plumulaceous, oblomovism, etiolation, pavonine, somnolent, logorrhea, fulguration, gossamer, prestidigitation, daffodil, inchoate and 174 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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O! Timballo
for the same
tea-poy, pooking fork, ait, eyot, quodlibet, milk leg, tussie-mussie, calash, gueules, caitiff, bindery, demi-rep and 224 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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Words that were new to me
but now they're not because I looked them up. In cases of polysemy or homography, *of course* it was the oddest meaning that stumped me. ;)
Procrustean bed, idem sonans, hob, backcap, quango, cheap-jack, pantechnicon, churrigueresco, chopfallen, maritorious, supererogation, catimini and 212 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
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favorite words
sawbones, grackle, celadon, brio, loam, trull, mint, saliva, serape, frisson, impasto, reek and 547 more...
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redtagevent's Words
exiguous, numen, recondite, concatenate, tuistic, interstitial, peroration, asperity, alacrity, expatiate, farouche, rhodomontade and 112 more...
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Words I just like
hobbitry, obfuscate, moribund, bally, idleness, ale, lostwithiel, elfin, spiffing, wayfaring, methinks, abstruse and 123 more...
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cooked words
cook, cuisine, kitchen, quittor, apricot, precocious, biscotto, biscuit, charcuterie, concoct, decoct, ricotta and 89 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2014 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for drupe.
dontcry Yes! Feb 27, 2009
kalli A pistachio is in fact a drupe and not a true nut. Fascinating, yes? Nov 2, 2007