Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A tall tropical Asian annual plant (Abelmoschus esculentus) widely cultivated in warm regions for its edible, mucilaginous green pods.
- n. The edible pods of this plant, used in soups and as a vegetable. Also called regionally gumbo.
- n. See gumbo.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A plant, Hibiscus esculentus, an esteemed vegetable, cultivated in the East and West Indies, the southern United States, etc. See gumbo. Its seeds yield a fine food-oil, not, however, extracted on a commercially remunerative scale, and it produces a fiber apparently suitable for coarse bagging, etc. See
Hibiscus and Abelmoschus.
Wiktionary
- n. The annual plant, Abelmoschus esculentus, possibly of Ethiopian origin, grown for its edible pods.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) An annual plant (Abelmoschus esculentus syn. Hibiscus esculentus), whose green pods, abounding in nutritious mucilage, are much used for soups, stews, or pickles; gumbo.
- n. The pods of the plant okra, used as a vegetable; also, a dish prepared with them; gumbo.
WordNet 3.0
- n. long mucilaginous green pods; may be simmered or sauteed but used especially in soups and stews
- n. long green edible beaked pods of the okra plant
- n. tall coarse annual of Old World tropics widely cultivated in southern United States and West Indies for its long mucilaginous green pods used as basis for soups and stews; sometimes placed in genus Hibiscus
Etymologies
- Probably from Igbo ọkụrụ. (Wiktionary)
- Of West African origin; akin to Akan (Twi) nkruma. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I have been up to my ears in okra the past two weeks with more on its way.”
“But surprisingly, I found them more than adequate — I actually enjoyed eating them and was thankful that I had more than one jar as I learned that I my friend was correct — pickled okra is indeed a very good thing.”
“I only started eating fried okra a few years ago (though have since made up for much lost time) and pickled okra is an even more recent addition to my table.”
“* In my yankee opinion, the best use of okra is as an ingredient for puke.”
“And okra is in such abundance now I'm game to give pickling them a try!”
“I pick a few for a meal because okra is not such a hot favorite with my DH.”
“Cook in the oven till the okra is cooked and starts to attain a brown shade.”
“Bring the water to a boil and cook 15 minutes or until the dried okra is half cooked.”
Ingredient: Dried Okra (with Recipe for Armenian Okra & Meat in Tangy Tomato Sauce)
“Cleaning normal size okra is time-consuming; cleaning okra so much smaller seemed as if it would be interminable.”
“To prepare it for use, dried okra is first boiled in water with lemon and onion until it is half cooked.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘okra’.
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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food collection
bread, peel, pot, chorizo, Filet, olive, fill, Phyllo, dough, bake, mat, pinot and 988 more...
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Oklahoma, OK!
oklahoma, Oklahoma, OK, Sooners, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Trail of Tears, The Grapes of Wrath, Okie from Muskogee, Woody Guthrie, okra, Norman and 23 more...
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Really Cool Four-Letter Words
I marvel at the amazing variety of four-letter words in the English language. And that's not even counting really common (to me) words like fuck.
ibis, pelf, sofa, iota, oboe, lava, icon, sped, puha, pulp, puma, kyat and 150 more...
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cross words
the good ole boys of the nyt crossword puzzle
oleo, oreo, stlo, amie, ares, eros, erato, sloe, ogee, apse, enola, ecru and 94 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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minneapolitan's Words
hissyfit, fussbudget, aghast, lament, trichinellosis, tranche, decadent, aspersion, pejorative, aniline, galoshes, accede and 200 more...
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Professional Scrabble Lexicon (TWL)
A myriad of game-changing words every Scrabble addict must have in his arsenal.
Keep in mind that these are all tried-and-true feasibly playable words selected for their handiness, i.e...paragon, pignora, ganef, suttee, origan, ohia, aioli, abasement, lehr, mho, tallow, harelike and 843 more...
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food
food, chef, spice, salt, sugar, pumpkin, apples, fruit, vegetable, savory, soup, sauce and 280 more...
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Fun Words
Words that have funny meanings or are just fun to say.
kumquat, chimichanga, sarsparilla, rutabaga, rumpus, flummox, encrusted, prestidigitation, pomegranate, preposterous, dentiloquist, sepulchre and 323 more...
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Interesting Foods
smelt, sprat, caviar, sushi, papadum, garlic naan, injera, doro wat, miso, pho, edamame, tataki and 170 more...
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Only on Wordie/Wordnik
Okay, mostly on Wordie. But it's more fun here anyway.
brannock device, polari, stupidhead, in toto, nounal, flustrated, stuffocate, firkin, full-assed, placeholder name, pro-text, cheesequake and 408 more...
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ifjuly's list
favorite words. some are made up injokes between me and my husband or family.
skein, zaftig, july, bed, orifice, aesthete, ink, parce-que, desormais, cake, pusillanimous, pulse and 531 more...
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MsHalston's Words
theoretically, insufferable, apolitico, milquetoast, egregious, aplomb, elan, fraught, flummox, befrocked, moll, molten and 605 more...
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Conversations for the Ages
A list of words that have fascinating conversations on them. Or just, you know, really funny ones. If I missed any, I hope someone will let me know...
Also see a few other Wordizens' l...misuse, slough of despond, drinking problem, sausage fest, vergerhade, baromets, todal, googlewhack, quetzalcoatl, cheesewa, cheesois, absinthe and 187 more...
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Exotic Tastes
Interesting words related to food, ingredients, dishes, cookery, cuisines and so on. Exotic in this case is entirely subjective, with funkelberries on top.
tatty, neep, flummery, babaganoush, tahini, samphire, loblolly, scrumpy, fressen, luwak, duxelle, edamame and 213 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for okra.

hernesheir The first definition herein incorrectly refers okra to the pods/fruits of a leguminous plant. Okra is a member of the Malvaceae, or mallow family of plants.
Elsewhere this term refers to the soft, edible, beaked, mucilaginous green capsular fruits of Abelmoschus esculentus, a.k.a. Hibiscus esculentus, and lady fingers. The green pods are either battered and fried, or stewed (commonly with diced tomatoes and onions), or used as an ingredient and thickener (due to its mucilage) in gumbo in the southern US and elsewhere. Jan 4, 2009
reesetee I still want to know what the Arabic word is for “to cut off the upper end of an okra.�?
*wondering and humming* Jan 10, 2008
chained_bear Great. Now every time I see this word, apparently, I'm going to start singing sionnach's song. *humming* ohhhhhhh-kra-mohel... Jan 10, 2008
jennarenn Amazing. We've found something just a little too weird for Weird Al. Jan 10, 2008
chained_bear skipvia, I'm sure you resemble Johnny Depp in many ways---and at least one of them is "not at all." ;)
OHHHHHHHKRA-MOHEL where the wind comes sweepin' down the ... well. Those lyrics don't really work. *earworm alert!* Jan 10, 2008
seanahan That's a great article from the New York Times, which for me is saying a lot, since I have very little respect for that paper. Jan 10, 2008
skipvia Actually, Charleston is not my okra-homa. It's Rock Hill.
Many people point out how much I resemble Johnny Depp. Which is not at all. Jan 10, 2008
sionnach Hmmm. Now I have this ineradicable image of Johnny Depp playing skipvia in "Skipvia: the demon mohel of Charleston" Jan 10, 2008
reesetee Good grief, sionnach, what are they feeding you these days? ;-) Jan 10, 2008
reesetee Apparently the author means to torture us by not telling us what the word is. Otherwise, you can be sure I'd have Wordiefied it! Jan 10, 2008
sionnach "Circumcise"? Which would make skipvia an okra-mohel I think there's a song about it:
OOOOOOOO-KRA-MOHEL ...... Jan 10, 2008
skipvia What yarb said. I spent a lot of my early years doing exactly that (okra grows in profusion in South Carolina) and now I want to know what to call it. Jan 10, 2008
yarb But what WAS that word?! Jan 10, 2008
reesetee For anyone who knows only European languages, to wade into Arabic is to discover an endlessly strange and yet oddly ordered lexical universe. Some words have definitions that go on for pages and seem to encompass all possible meanings; others are outlandishly precise. Paging through the dictionary one night, I found a word that means “to cut off the upper end of an okra.�? -- "Arabic Lessons," Robert F. Worth, New York Times, Jan. 6, 2008 Jan 9, 2008