Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A tropical American tree (Hippomane mancinella) having poisonous fruit and a milky sap that causes skin blisters on contact.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A tree, Hippomane Mancinella, of moderate size, found in the West Indies, Central America, and Florida.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A euphorbiaceous tree (Hippomane Mancinella) of tropical America, having a poisonous and blistering milky juice, and poisonous acrid fruit somewhat resembling an apple.
  • noun a tree (Cameraria latifolia) of the East Indies, having similar poisonous properties.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A tropical American tree, Hippomane mancinella, having apple-like, poisonous fruit, and a sap that causes blisters on contact with the skin

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French mancenille, from Spanish manzanillo, a kind of olive tree bearing fine small olives, manchineel, from manzanilla, fine small olive, fruit of the manchineel, from diminutive of manzana, apple, from Old Spanish mançana; see manzanilla.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Spanish manzanillo, from manzana (apple), from Latin malum Matianum (a kind of apple).

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Examples

  • Next to me on the rocks was my bottle of water, still almost full, my pile of manchineel apples, my purse, and my one shoe.

    SUSPICION KATE BRIAN 2009

  • Because that is a manchineel tree, she said, looking me in the eye.

    Paradise Lost Kate Brian 2009

  • Next to me on the rocks was my bottle of water, still almost full, my pile of manchineel apples, my purse, and my one shoe.

    SUSPICION KATE BRIAN 2009

  • Because that is a manchineel tree, she said, looking me in the eye.

    Paradise Lost Kate Brian 2009

  • He suffered from poison of another kind; for drinking at a spring in which some boughs of the manchineel had been thrown, the effects were so severe as, in the opinion of some of his friends, to inflict a lasting injury upon his constitution.

    The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson Southey, Robert, 1774-1843 1993

  • In one of my excursions at this place I found a large manchineel tree.

    A Sailor of King George Frederick Hoffman

  • "You went to sleep under the shade of some poison-trees, manchineel trees, we call them here," the doctor explained.

    Plotting in Pirate Seas Francis Rolt-Wheeler 1918

  • Lord Nelson, when a young man here in Barbados, was made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of the manchineel had been thrown.

    Plotting in Pirate Seas Francis Rolt-Wheeler 1918

  • Still weak from his illness after the manchineel poisoning, and exhausted as he was after a sleepless night in the grip of a hurricane, yet Stuart's first thought on leaving the hurricane wing was to get a news story to his paper.

    Plotting in Pirate Seas Francis Rolt-Wheeler 1918

  • The salt ponds, sunken far below the level of the sea, from lack of rain, glittered white, but they were set with aloes and manchineel, and there were low and muddy flats to be avoided.

    The Conqueror Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton 1902

Comments

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  • –noun

    a tropical American tree or shrub, Hippomane mancinella, of the spurge family, having a milky, highly caustic, poisonous sap.

    May 20, 2009