Definitions

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

  • noun Any of certain Andean evergreen shrubs or small trees of the genus Erythroxylum, especially E. coca, whose leaves contain cocaine and other alkaloids.
  • noun The dried leaves of such a plant, chewed by people of the Andes for a stimulating effect and also used for extraction of cocaine and other alkaloids.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The dried leaf of Erythroxylon Coca, natural order Linaceæ, a small shrub of the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, but cultivated in other parts of South America.
  • noun The plant itself.
  • noun A Japanese rice-measure, equal to about 5 Winchester bushels.

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

  • noun The dried leaf of a South American shrub (Erythroxylon Coca). In med., called Erythroxylon.
  • noun an American herb (Richardsonia scabra), yielding a nutritious fodder. Its roots are used as a substitute for ipecacuanha.

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

  • noun The dried leaf of a South American shrub (Erythroxylon coca), widely cultivated legally in Andean countries, and the source of cocaine.

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

  • noun United States comedienne who starred in early television shows with Sid Caesar (1908-2001)
  • noun a South American shrub whose leaves are chewed by natives of the Andes; a source of cocaine
  • noun dried leaves of the coca plant (and related plants that also contain cocaine); chewed by Andean people for their stimulating effect

Etymologies

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

[Spanish, from Quechua kúka.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Spanish coca, from Quechua kuka.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Var. cuca.

    October 16, 2008

  • A bank has provided a trade finance loan to the Ghana Coca Board, it says here. I wish I could leave that uncorrected.

    September 24, 2010