Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A prostrate southern Brazilian plant (Arachis hypogaea) widely cultivated in tropical and warm temperate regions, having yellow flowers on stalks that bend over so that the seed pods ripen underground.
- n. The edible, nutlike, oily seed of this plant, used for food and as a source of oil. Also called regionally goober, goober pea.
- n. A peanut-shaped piece of polystyrene, used in cushioning items during shipment.
- n. Slang A person small in stature.
- n. Slang A person who is regarded as being insignificant.
- n. Informal A very small amount of money; a trifling sum.
- adj. Slang Having little or no importance; insignificant: peanut politicians.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One of the edible fruits of Arachis hypogæn.
- n. The plant that bears these fruits, better known in England as groundnut. See Arachis. Also called ground-pea, earthnut, Manila nut, jur-nut, goober, and pindar.
Wiktionary
- n. A legume resembling a nut, the fruit of the plant Arachis hypogaea.
- v. transitive To pull on somebody's tie as a prank, causing the knot to tighten.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) The fruit of a trailing leguminous plant (Arachis hypogæa); also, the plant itself, which is widely cultivated for its fruit.
WordNet 3.0
- n. pod of the peanut vine containing usually 2 nuts or seeds; `groundnut' and `monkey nut' are British terms
- n. widely cultivated American plant cultivated in tropical and warm regions; showy yellow flowers on stalks that bend over to the soil so that seed pods ripen underground
- n. a young child who is small for his age
- n. underground pod of the peanut vine
- adj. of little importance or influence or power; of minor status
Etymologies
- Originally called ground nut (akin to Icelandic jarðhneta, German Erdenuss and Hungarian földimogyoró) and ground pea, resulting in peanut. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The Sierra region of Puebla does, in fact, have several peanut-based dishes, and the peanut is an important ingredient in mole poblano.”
“They join the rest of what I call the peanut gallery those of us, left and right, who cannot understand the bank bailouts.”
Woodward and Hall on Current Policy, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Like Haldane, they tend to be in the policy-making community rather than in what I call the peanut gallery.”
Finance as a Network, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“The result was a product which I called peanut butter.”
“In gang slang, the word "peanut" is used to derisively describe a rival gang member.”
“This is what we call a peanut butter and sarcasm sandwich”
“This goes best with the Vangi Rassa Danya. cha Koot lavun or Brinjals in peanut sauce.”
“Humm but actually it is a just a simple Brinjal/Eggplant in peanut sauce.”
“That happened this year when nine people died and 700 were sickened — including 226 school-age children — by salmonella in peanut products from the Peanut Corp. of America, or PCA.”
“When she laced the treat with a tiny bit ofMycobacterium vaccae, she found that the mice ran through the maze twice as fast as mice that were given plain peanut butter.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘peanut’.
-
UK - slang
chin wag, arse about, bollock, starkers, sweet Fanny Adams, skive, shufti, codswallop, rhyming slang, bollocks, nookie, skew-whiff and 208 more...
-
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...
-
IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
veal, valve, used, yak, wax, wan, teak, vat, vas, strip, use, strap and 4515 more...
-
Genes
Interesting gene names. Some of these may have changed recently (to something less offensive/funny).
http://www.genenames.org/
tinman, agnostic, dreadlocks, Van Gogh, fruitless, lava lamp, ariadne, cheap date, ken and barbie, I'm not dead yet, I'm not dead yet 2, manic fringe and 1192 more... -
color (yellow)
tiara's color lists rebuilt :)
( visual, colors, yellow, descriptive, randomness )yellow, Yellow, Cloud, Straw/Stramineous, Peach, Apricot/Ibis, Lemon, Butter, Mustard, Meline/Canary, Gold(Metallic, Web and 405 more...
-
Butter Beans and Snaps
List of as many pea and bean varieties as I can cook up - mostly common names.
field peas, butter beans, snap peas, lima beans, crowder peas, haricots verts, string bean, green bean, pole bean, navy bean, white acre peas, zipper pea and 186 more...
-
food collection
bread, peel, pot, chorizo, Filet, olive, fill, Phyllo, dough, bake, mat, pinot and 988 more...
-
My Favorites
peanut, chipmunk, pearl, blueberry, graceful, poof, scrumptious, corny, scrambled, blimp, classy, butterfly and 1 more...
-
Affectionate names you call your kids
peanut, pickle, jelly bean, babby, babs, cutie-head, sweetlie, treasure, cutie, monkey, noodles, monkey-noodles and 21 more...
-
root tips and other ends
stolon, circinate, calyptrogen, meristem, verticil, fusiform, telomere, skirret, relbun, turpeth, galangal, vetiver and 54 more...
-
thing
apron, lard, clove, camphor, alfalfa, amber, caraway, juniper, kohl, lute, shale, glyph and 142 more...
-
jagosaurus's favorites
Words I like mostly because of the way they sound and feel.
ticonderoga, petulance, snark, estimable, chickahominy, feline, gezellig, gneiss, shit, willy-nilly, shelter, coda and 366 more...
-
Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
-
mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
-
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...
-
Chromonyms
These chromonyms are defined as colors in at least one dictionary (mostly MW3). (Actually there's one fake, for reasons I'll explain someday.) They are all one-word nouns such as "kelly", which can...
absinthe, acacia, acorn, alabaster, alesan, almond, aloma, amaranth, amber, amethyst, anemone, anil and 821 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for peanut.

bilby "Speaking on SEN radio this morning, Clarkson addressed the scenes following Hawthorn's 17-point loss to Essendon, in which Hawk onballer Brad Sewell was knocked out by Bomber captain Matthew Lloyd.
'I'm a bit of a peanut that I am so passionate about my footy, I suppose,' the Hawk mentor said."
- Will Brodie, Clarkson says his "blood boiled", realfooty.com.au, 31 August 2009. Aug 31, 2009
hernesheir I especially enjoy buying raw green peanuts and boiling them in brine. Hot boiled P-nuts are sold on roadsides in my state (FL). Aug 26, 2009
whichbe Peanuts are used in the production of dynamite. May 7, 2008
chained_bear For an interesting (well, sorta) conversation about peanuts, see the comments on pomegranate's excellent list, here. Jan 8, 2008