papaw

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A deciduous tree (Asimina triloba) of the eastern and southeast United States, having flowers with three sepals, three petals, and numerous stamens and fleshy, edible fruit.
2. n. The fruit of this tree.
3. n. See papaya.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The tree Carica Papaya, or its fruit. The papaw in native in South America, but now widely diffused throughout the tropics. Its height is about 20 feet, and its deeply seven-lobed leaves are 2 feet in diameter and borne on footstalks 2 feet long. The fruit is 10 inches long, commonly of an oblong form, ribbed, and having a thick fleshy rind. It is sometimes eaten raw or made into a sauce, or when green is boiled as a vegetable and is also pickled. The trunk, leaves, and fruit contain an acrid milky juice (see papain), which has the property of making quickly tender meat which is boiled with a little of it or wrapped in the leaves, or, as it is claimed, merely hung up among the leaves. The seeds are an efficacious vermifuge, The leaves are saponaceous. Also called melon-tree.
2. n. The tree Asimina triloba, or its fruit, native in the United States. It is a small tree with lurid flowers appearing with the leaves, which, when grown are obovate-lanceolate, thin, and rather large. The smooth oblong fruit is 3 or 4 inches long, filled with a sweet pulp in which are embedded the bean-like seeds.
3. n. A bushwhacker: with reference to the subsistence or possible subsistence of bushwhackers on the fruit of the papaw.
4. n. Also written pawpaw.
5. n. A slave from Dahome. [West Indies.]

Wiktionary

1. n. A tree, Carica papaya, of tropical America, belonging to the order Passifloreae and producing dull orange-colored, melon-shaped fruit.
2. n. US, dialect, southern US grandfather, especially paternal grandfather
3. n. US, dialect, southern US, less commonly father

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Bot.) Same as papaya, senses 1 and 2.
2. n. (Bot.) A tree of the genus Asimina (Asimina triloba), growing in the western and southern parts of the United States, and producing a sweet edible fruit; also, the fruit itself.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. fruit with yellow flesh; related to custard apples
2. n. small tree native to the eastern United States having oblong leaves and fleshy fruit