plantain

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various plants of the genus Plantago that produce dense spikes of small greenish flowers, especially either of two Eurasian weeds, P. major or P. lanceolata. Also called ribwort.
2. n. A large, tropical, treelike herb (Musa paradisiaca) of southeast Asia, resembling the banana and bearing similar fruit.
3. n. The fruit of this plant, used as a staple food in tropical regions.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A plant of the genus Plantago, especially P. major, the common or greater plantain. This is a familiar dooryard weed, with large spreading leaves close to the ground, and slender spikes; it is a native of Europe and temperate Asia, but is now found nearly everywhere. (See hen-plant and way-bread.) The English plantain (so called in the United States) is P. lanceolata, the ribwort, rib-grass, or ripple-grass, of the same nativity as the former. It has narrow leaves with prominent ribs, and slender stalks a foot or two high, with short thick spikes. (See cocks and jackstraw.) The sea-plantain or seaside plantain, P. maritima, with linear leaves, occurs on muddy shores in both hemispheres. The leaf is bound upon in-flamed surfaces with a soothing effect. See also cut under amphitropous.
2. n. A tropical plant, Musa paradisaca or its fruit. The plantain closely resembles the banana, and is in fact often regarded as a variety of it. It is distinguished to the eye by purple spots on trie stem, and by its longer fruit. The plantain-fruit is commonly eaten cooked before fully mature, while the banana is mostly eaten fresh when ripe. The pulp is dried and pulverized to make meal. The fresh fruit is comparable chemically with the potato, the meal with rice. The plantain, together with the banana, supplies the chief food of millions in the tropics. Though less nutritious than wheat or potatoes, it is produced in vastly larger quantities from the same area, and with far less effort. Sometimes called Adam's apple, from the fancy that this was the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden; the specific name refers to the same fancy. See Musa and banana.
3. n. Plantago aristata, a species with very narrow leaves and long narrow bracts, native mostly west of the Mississippi but now a common weed eastward from Maine to Georgia.

Wiktionary

1. n. A plant of the genus Plantago, with a rosette of sessile leaves about 10 cm long with a narrow part instead of a petiole, and with a spike inflorescence with the flower spacing varying widely among the species. See also psyllium.
2. n. A plant in the genus Musa, the genus that includes banana, but with lower sugar content than banana.
3. n. The fruit of the plant, usually cooked before eating and used like potatoes.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Bot.) A treelike perennial herb (Musa paradisiaca) of tropical regions, bearing immense leaves and large clusters of the fruits called plantains. See musa.
2. n. The fruit of this plant. It is long and somewhat cylindrical, slightly curved, and, when ripe, soft, fleshy, and covered with a thick but tender yellowish skin. The plantain is a staple article of food in most tropical countries, especially when cooked.
3. n. (Bot.) Any plant of the genus Plantago, but especially the Plantago major, a low herb with broad spreading radical leaves, and slender spikes of minute flowers. It is a native of Europe, but now found near the abode of civilized man in nearly all parts of the world.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. starchy banana-like fruit; eaten (always cooked) as a staple vegetable throughout the tropics
2. n. a banana tree bearing hanging clusters of edible angular greenish starchy fruits; tropics and subtropics
3. n. any of numerous plants of the genus Plantago; mostly small roadside or dooryard weeds with elliptic leaves and small spikes of very small flowers; seeds of some used medicinally