Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various chiefly tropical trees of the genus Diospyros, having hard wood and orange-red fruit with sweet usually soft pulp, especially D. kaki, native to East Asia, and D. virginiana, native to the eastern United States.
  • noun The fruit of any of these trees.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One of several species of the genus Dsipyros; primarily, D. Virginiana of North America, the date-plum, a tree common in the South, growing to a height of 60 feet.
  • noun The fruit of any of the above-named trees.

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

  • noun (Bot.) An American tree (Diospyros Virginiana) and its fruit, found from New York southward. The fruit is like a plum in appearance, but is very harsh and astringent until it has been exposed to frost, when it becomes palatable and nutritious.
  • noun Diospyros Kaki and its red or yellow edible fruit, which outwardly resembles a tomato, but contains a few large seeds.

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

  • noun A type of fruit, of orange colour, very sweet, quite astringent when immature.
  • noun The tree this fruit grows on, generally one of two species of ebony: Diospyros kaki (Asian) or Diospyros virginiana (North American).

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

  • noun any of several tropical trees of the genus Diospyros
  • noun orange fruit resembling a plum; edible when fully ripe

Etymologies

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

[Of Virginia Algonquian origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Powhatan pichamins, pushemins, pasimenan ("dried fruit"), from Proto-Algonquian *-min- (“fruit, berry”).

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word persimmon.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • If you've never had persimmon spice cake, google up one of many recipes and end your suffering and deprivation.

    February 3, 2008

  • 1612 J. SMITH Map of Virginia 12 The fruit like medlers; they call Putchamins, they cast vppon hurdles on a mat, and preserue them as Pruines.

    May 8, 2008

  • Travis, who's the 'they' in 'they call Putchamins'?

    May 8, 2008

  • Peruse Wordie and learn to preserue Pruines.

    May 8, 2008

  • These are yummy but they make you hot.

    May 8, 2008

  • I always thought that 'persimmons' referred to Richard's Swedish cousin, the personal trainer turned Swedish chef. Famed for his 'Per Simmons' diet.

    May 8, 2008