Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various small trees or shrubs of the family Elaeagnaceae, having olivelike fruit and silvery or brown scales on the stems and leaves, especially one of the genus Elaeagnus, such as Russian olive or silverberry.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The true wild olive, Olea Oleaster.
  • noun Any plant of the genus Elæagnus, especially E. angustifolia, also called wild olive.

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

  • noun The wild olive tree (Olea Europea, var. sylvestris).
  • noun Any species of the genus Elæagus. See eleagnus. The small silvery berries of the common species (Elæagnus hortensis) are called Trebizond dates, and are made into cakes by the Arabs.

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

  • noun A plant in the family Elaeagnaceae,
  • noun Cultivated olive trees that have re-naturalized, sometimes treated as a species Olea oleaster, the wild olive.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of several shrubs of the genus Elaeagnus having silver-white twigs and yellow flowers followed by olivelike fruits

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Latin, from olea, olive tree; see oleaginous.]

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Examples

  • Some erroneously assert that all fish are female except in the cartilaginous fishes, for they think that the females of fish differ from what are supposed to be males only in the same way as in those plants where the one bears fruit but the other is fruitless, as olive and oleaster, fig and caprifig.

    On the Generation of Animals 2002

  • Sheep are fattened by twigs of the olive or of the oleaster, by vetch, and bran of every kind; and these articles of food fatten all the more if they be first sprinkled with brine.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • Beginning with the fruits of the oleaster and white mulberry in the early season, the ingathering of wheat, of almonds and Beyrout honey, of apples and apricots and corn, of grapes and of figs, of maize and of pomegranates and dates, of olives and walnuts, had taken place as the months passed, and now from the northern bounds of Galilee to the southern edge of Judea and from

    The Coming of the King Bernie Babcock

  • Among huge masses of granite are tangles of every shrub the island produces, the wild olive or oleaster being one of the most elegant; while every part of the heights close to the town abounds with little picture subjects, with a clear blue sky for a background.

    Itinerary through Corsica by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads C. B. Black

  • Tertullian (de Testim., v., after Rom. xi.); but the oleaster had thereby lost its very right to exist.

    The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries 1851-1930 1908

  • Olea fragrans oleander oleaster onion opuntia orange, culture of

    Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) 1906

  • It was probably the oleaster (Eleagnus angustifolius), which grows abundantly in almost all parts of Palestine, especially about Hebron and

    Easton's Bible Dictionary M.G. Easton 1897

  • _ An Olyve tre; _olea_, _oleaster_, _oliva_; _olivaris_.

    The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Henry Nicholson Ellacombe 1868

  • _oleaster_, without the indulgent winter-house take them in.

    Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) Or A Discourse of Forest Trees John Evelyn 1663

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