sorghum

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An Old World grass (Sorghum bicolor), several varieties of which are widely cultivated as grain and forage or as a source of syrup.
2. n. Syrup made from the juice of this plant.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A plant of the former genus Sorghum, commonly the cultivated saccharine plant once known as Sorghum (or Holcus) saccharatum, lately considered a variety of S. vulgare, but now classified as Andropogon Sorghum, var. saccharatus. It is a cane-like grass, with the stature and habit of broom-corn, or of the taller varieties of Indian corn, but more slender than the latter, without ears, and of a glaucous hue. Sorghum is cultivated throughout Africa, in forms called imphee, chiefly for the sweet juice of the cane. In the United States it has been employed for many years to make syrup, for which purpose it is more or less grown in every State. It has also been the subject of much experiment in sugar-making, and according to Wiley is now practically available for this purpose. The name is also applied to the var. Halepense, and possibly to others of the same species. See def. 2. Also called Chinese sugarcane.
2. n. A former genus of grasses, of the tribe Andropogoneæ, now included as a subgenus in Andropogon (Edouard Hackel, 1889). Like the rest of the genus, it has one-flowered spikelets disposed in pairs at the joints of a rachis, one of each pair pedicelled, one sessile. The sessile spikelet is in all the pairs alike; the flower is fertile, and in the pedicelled spikelets male, neutral, or abortive. The rachis is fragile, or in culture tenacious; its joints and the pedicels are filiform, and convex on the back or flat without furrow. The sessile spikelet and grain are somewhat compressed on the back, or in cultivation sometimes nearly globose. The species are most often tall and flatleaved grasses, diffused through the tropics and here and there in the temperate zone—one, A.

Wiktionary

1. n. A cereal, Sorghum vulgare or Sorghum bicolor, the grains of which are used to make flour and as cattle feed.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A genus of grasses, properly limited to two species, Sorghum Halepense, the Arabian millet, or Johnson grass (see Johnson grass), and S. vulgare, the Indian millet (see Indian millet, under Indian).
2. n. A variety of Sorghum vulgare, grown for its saccharine juice; the Chinese sugar cane.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. made from juice of sweet sorghum
2. n. economically important Old World tropical cereal grass
3. n. annual or perennial tropical and subtropical cereal grasses: sorghum