Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A sea cucumber of the genus Holothuria of the southern Pacific and Indian oceans, dried or smoked for use as an ingredient in soup, especially in China and Indonesia. Also called bêche-de-mer.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A kind of edible holothurian, as Holothuria edulis; a sea-slug, sea-cucumber, sea-pudding, or bêche-de-mer; also, such holothurians as a commercial product prepared for food. Trepang is found chiefly on coral reefs in the Eastern seas, and is highly esteemed for food in China, where it is imported in large quantities. The animal is repulsive, somewhat resembling a stout worm in shape, but having rows of processes on its body, and others radiated about the mouth. It varies in length from 6 to 24 inches. Much skill and care are required in the operation of curing, which is performed by gutting and boiling these seaslugs, and spreading them out on a perforated platform over a wood-fire (or sometimes in the sun) to dry. Sundried trepangs are in special request in China for making soups. The fishery is carried on in numerous localities in the Indian Ocean, in the Eastern Archipelago, and on the shores of Australia.
Wiktionary
- n. Bêche-de-mer, sea cucumber.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Any one of several species of large holothurians, some of which are dried and extensively used as food in China; -- called also
bêche de mer ,sea cucumber , andsea slug .
WordNet 3.0
- n. of warm coasts from Australia to Asia; used as food especially by Chinese
Etymologies
- Malay teripang.
Examples
“[74] The balate -- also known as "sea slug," "sea cucumber," "beche de mer," and commercially as "trepang" -- is a slug (_Holothuria edulis_) used as food in the Eastern Archipelago and in China, in which country it is regarded as a delicacy by the wealthy classes, and brings from seven to fifty cents a pound in the markets.”
“The trepang is a sort of sea-slug, which is dried and used by the Chinese to make soup.”
“-- There are a few species of _Holothuria_, of which the trepang is the best known example.”
“_ -- There are a few species of _Holothuriæ_, of which the trepang is the best known example.”
“The Macassarese traded with local Indigenous people and fished for 'trepang' (commonly known as sea cucumber), which they sold as a delicacy on the lucrative Chinese market.”
“It seriously threatens important fishing stocks in the region, including shark, trepang, trochus and several fin-fish.”
Foreign Minister: Collaboration and Cooperation in the Arafura-Timor Sea Region
“His name was Baderoon, and as he was unmarried and had been used to a roving life, having been several voyages to North Australia to catch trepang or “beche de mer”, I was in hopes of being able to keep him.”
“Termed also trepang, sea cucumber, sea slug, cotton spinner, and known scientifically as Holothuridae, no less than twenty varieties have been described and are identified by popular and technical titles.”
“Along the coasts of the large inhabited islands the Chinese travelled as traders or middlemen, at great personal risk of attack by individual robbers, bartering the goods of manufacturers for native produce, which chiefly consisted of sinamay cloth, shark-fin, balate (trepang), edible birds'-nests, gold in grain, and siguey-shells, for which there was a demand in Siam for use as money.”
“British, American, and German traders established themselves on shore, and vessels continued to arrive with European and American manufactures in exchange for coprah, trepang, ivory-nuts, tortoise-shell, etc.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘trepang’.
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Logolepsy
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Food that Shall Not Be Named
Vilest food substances on the planet. Take it beyond simple likes and dislikes, people. We're talking food that's really gross (at least to a big cross-section of the world), or utterly bizarre.
casu marzu, pickled pig lips, head cheese, lutefisk, surströmming, hákarl, stinkhead, stinkflipper, haggis, muktuk, jellied pig's feet, tripe and 21 more...
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Gifts I do not wish to receive
single glove, single sock, rubber chainsaw, subscription to i..., submarine screen ..., rubber chicken soup, swine flu, burnt offering, stage whisper, stone treadmill, 22-volume paperba..., tortoiseshell win... and 61 more...
bilby Also an opera, bit close to home :-7 Oct 17, 2008
yarb He said he was a trader, and sold rice. He did not want to buy gutta-percha or beeswax, because he intended to employ his numerous crew in collecting trepang on the coral reefs outside the river, and also in seeking for bird's nests on the mainland.
- Conrad, Almayer's Folly (1896), ch. 4 Oct 17, 2008
sionnach sea cucumber. Feb 4, 2008