Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various plants or plant parts used by certain Native American peoples as food, especially the edible root of certain arums or the sclerotium of certain fungi.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Formerly, either of the plants the Virginia wake-robin, Peltandra undulata (P. Virginica, once Arum Virginicum), and the golden-club, Orontium aquaticum, both aquatics with deep fleshy and starchy rootstocks, which, rendered edible by cooking, were used by the Indians of Virginia as food.
  • noun A subterranean fungus, Pachyma Cocos, otherwise known as Indian bread, Indian head, and Indian loaf, found widely in the southern United States.
  • noun [capitalized] An inhabitant of lower Virginia.
  • noun The poor land in lower Virginia.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A curious vegetable production of the Southern Atlantic United States, growing under ground like a truffle and often attaining immense size. The real nature is unknown. Called also Indian bread, and Indian loaf.

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

  • noun Any edible root of a plant used by Native Americans of colonial-era Virginia
  • noun uncommon, US A person, especially if poor and malnourished or implied to be, living east of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
  • noun The sclerotium of a fungus, Wolfiporia extensa, used as food and herbal medicine.

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

  • noun perennial herb of the eastern United States having arrowhead-shaped leaves and an elongate pointed spathe and green berries

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 tockawhoughe. The "person" sense implies that such a person was so poor as to be reduced to eating the root.

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Examples

  • Although Peter must have known as well as Ambrose that the latter, because of his position in the car, would be the first to see the electrical towers of the power plant at V____, the halfway point of their trip, he leaned forward and slightly toward the center of the car and pretended to be looking for them through the flat pinewoods and tuckahoe creeks along the highway.

    The Worst Years of Your Life Mark Jude Poirier 2007

  • Ned said, All that plume grass and tuckahoe and mountain holly.

    A Lincoln Rhyme eBook Boxed Set Jeffery Deaver 2001

  • Also, an edible root called _tockwough_ (tuckahoe, a tuberous plant growing in fresh marshes, with a root similar to that of a potato) was gathered, and after the Indian fashion, pounded into a meal from which bread was made.

    Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century Annie Lash Jester

  • Later on, the women spread a great breakfast of fish and turkey and venison, maize bread, tuckahoe and pohickory.

    To Have and to Hold Mary Johnston 1903

  • Foods to strengthen the digestive system include spleen-boosting foods such as lotus seeds, fu ling (tuckahoe), yam, jujubes and dang shen (radix codonopsitis).

    When you have runs and tummy ache -- Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 -- English Window to China New Zhang Qian 2010

  • This I Believe Gift Shop salamander john - tuckahoe, New York

    salamander john 2009

  • Let my fathers tarry and my women shall bring them chinquepin cakes and tuckahoe, pohickory and succotash, and my young men -- "

    Prisoners of Hope A Tale of Colonial Virginia Mary Johnston 1903

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