manna

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. In the Bible, the food miraculously provided for the Israelites in the wilderness during their flight from Egypt.
2. n. Spiritual nourishment of divine origin.
3. n. Something of value that a person receives unexpectedly: viewed the bonus as manna from heaven.
4. n. The dried exudate of certain plants, as that of the Mediterranean ash tree, formerly used as a laxative.
5. n. A sweet granular substance excreted on the leaves of plants by certain insects, especially aphids, and often harvested by ants.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The food by which the children of Israel were sustained in the wilderness (Ex. xvi. 14-36; Num. xi. 6, 7). The circumstances attending the gift of manna show that it was believed to be miraculous. Modern commentators differ in opinion as to its probable nature: by some it is identified with an exudation of the tamarisk-tree, and by others with a lichen which, torn from its home and carried vast distances by the wind, still falls and is gathered for food in the Sinaitic peninsula (see manna-lichen); and by others it is regarded as a special and miraculous creation.
2. n. Hence Delicious food for either the body or the mind; delectable material for nourishment or entertainment.
3. n. Divine or spiritual food.
4. n. In pharmacy, a sweet concrete juice obtained by incisions made in the stem of Fraxinus Ornus, a native of Sicily, Calabria, and other parts of the south of Europe, and from other species of ash. It is either naturally concreted or exsiccated and purified by art. At the present day the manna of commerce is collected exclusively in Sicily, where the manna-ash is cultivated for the purpose in regular plantations. The best manna is in oblong pieces or flakes of a whitish or pale-yellow color, light, friable, and somewhat transparent. It has a slight peculiar odor, and a sweetish taste mixed with a slight degree of bitterness, and is employed as a gentle laxative for children or persons of weak habit. It is, however, generally used as an adjunct to other more active medicines. It consists principally of a crystallizable sweet substance named mannite, and certain other substances in smaller quantity. Sweetish secretions exuded by some other plants growing in warm and dry climates, as the Eucalyptus viminalis, the manna-gum tree of Australia, and the Tamarix Gallica, var. mannifera, of Arabia and Syria, are also considered to be kinds of manna. Small quantities of manna, known as Briaçon manna, are obtained from the common larch, Larix Europæa.
5. n. The secretion of the tamarisk, Tamarix Gallica, var. mannifera. It is a honey-like liquid which exudes from punctures made by an insect, hardens on the stems, and drops to the ground. It is collected by the Arabs as a delicacy.

Wiktionary

1. n. Food miraculously produced for the Israelites in the desert in the book of Exodus.
2. n. By extension, any good thing which comes into one's hands by luck or good fortune.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Script.) The food supplied to the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness of Arabia; hence, divinely supplied food.
2. n. (Bot.) A name given to lichens of the genus Lecanora, sometimes blown into heaps in the deserts of Arabia and Africa, and gathered and used as food; called also manna lichen.
3. n. (Bot. & Med.) A sweetish exudation in the form of pale yellow friable flakes, coming from several trees and shrubs and used in medicine as a gentle laxative, as the secretion of Fraxinus Ornus, and Fraxinus rotundifolia, the manna ashes of Southern Europe.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. hardened sugary exudation of various trees
2. n. (Old Testament) food that God gave the Israelites during the Exodus