Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A tropical American evergreen tree (Anacardium occidentale) widely cultivated for its edible seeds.
  • noun The kidney-shaped seed of this tree.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See cushaw.
  • noun The Anacardium occidentale and its fruit. See Anacardium and cashew-nut.
  • noun Same as cachou.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A tree (Anacardium occidentale) of the same family which the sumac. It is native in tropical America, but is now naturalized in all tropical countries. Its fruit, a kidney-shaped nut, grows at the extremity of an edible, pear-shaped hypocarp, about three inches long.
  • noun the cashew nut.
  • noun the large, kidney-shaped fruit of the cashew, which is edible after the caustic oil has been expelled from the shell by roasting the nut.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A tree, Anacardium occidentale, native to northeastern Brazil, now widely grown in tropical climates for its cashew nuts and cashew apples.
  • noun A cashew nut.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun kidney-shaped nut edible only when roasted
  • noun tropical American evergreen tree bearing kidney-shaped nuts that are edible only when roasted

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably Portuguese acajú, from Tupí, from cajú, yellow fruit, acidic.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French acajou, from Portuguese acajú, from Tupian acajuba or aka'iu.

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Examples

Comments

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  • But also someone of Catholic and Jewish parentage according to Urban Dictionary.

    February 17, 2007

  • That's clever!

    February 17, 2007

  • See anacardic.

    September 8, 2008

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009