Definitions

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

  • noun Botany The wall of a ripened ovary; fruit wall.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In flowering plants, the seed-vessel or ripened ovary.

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

  • noun (Bot.) The ripened ovary; the walls of the fruit. See Illusts. of capsule, drupe, and legume.

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

  • noun botany The outermost layer, or skin, of a ripe fruit or ovary.
  • noun used figuratively

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

  • noun the ripened and variously modified walls of a plant ovary

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French péricarpe, from Latin pericarpium, from Ancient Greek περικάρπιον (perikarpion, "pod, husk, shell"), from περί (peri, "around") + καρπός (karpos, "fruit").

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