Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various North American shrubs resembling the blackthorn.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The fruit of the blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, a small bluish-black drupe; also, the fruit of P. umbellata.
- noun The blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, a shrub of hedgerows, thickets, etc., found in Europe and Russian and central Asia.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A small, bitter, wild European plum, the fruit of the blackthorn (
Prunus spinosa ); also, the tree itself.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The small, bitter, wild fruit of the
blackthorn (Prunus spinosa); also, the tree itself. - noun Any of various other plants of the genus
Prunus , as a shrub or small tree, Prunus alleghaniensis, bearing dark-purple fruit.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a thorny Eurasian bush with plumlike fruits
- noun wild plum of northeastern United States having dark purple fruits with yellow flesh
- noun small sour dark purple fruit of especially the Allegheny plum bush
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Real tea-leaf tea alone contains the restorative they want; which is not to be found in sloe-leaf tea.
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And it doesn't hurt that the drink's name also allows for the employment of a stock joke that turns on the fact that most people hear "slow" rather than "sloe" -- the purplish-red berry of the blackthorn bush that gives the liqueur its flavor.
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The fruit, called sloe, can be made into a liqueur called sloe gin, of the "fizz" fame, but Ulrike discovered a distillery that makes it into a kind of sherry made of sloes.
Archive 2006-10-01 Pat 2006
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The sloe, which is the blackthorn, comes still earlier and has fewer leaves.
Penelope's Irish Experiences Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin 1889
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The sloe is a shrub common in our hedgerows, and belongs to the natural order Amygdaleae; the fruit is about the size of a large pea, of a black colour, and covered with a bloom of a bright blue.
The Book of Household Management Isabella Mary 1861
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The sloe is a shrub common in our hedgerows, and belongs to the natural order Amygdaleae; the fruit is about the size of a large pea, of a black colour, and covered with a bloom of a bright blue.
The Book of Household Management Isabella Mary 1861
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There are readers who love this kind of sloe eyed, narrow waisted, naval academic excercise in adjectivity.
Archive 2006-09-03 Miss Snark 2006
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The third sort was a black berry, not in such plenty as the others, and resembled a bullace, or large kind of sloe, both in size and taste.
A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat William Bligh 1785
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The third sort was a blackberry; this was not in such plenty as the others and resembled a bullace, or large kind of sloe, both in size and taste.
A Voyage to the South Sea For The Purpose Of Conveying The Bread-Fruit Tree To The West Indies, Including An Account Of The Mutiny On Board The Ship William Bligh 1785
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A lanky, curly-haired young rebel with a kind of sloe-eyed charm, he’d grown up on a series of military bases where his father, a Marine lieutenant colonel, had served.
Rogue Warrior Marcinko, Richard 1992
bilby commented on the word sloe
Dark Danny has eyes
As black as the sloe,
And his freckles tell
Where the sunbeams go!
- Ivy Eastwick, 'Dark Danny'.
November 30, 2008
vendingmachine commented on the word sloe
The fruit, called sloe, can be made into a liqueur called sloe gin.
June 17, 2015
bilby commented on the word sloe
Sozzled journalists had often been known to indulge when officebound without much happening for them to report. Hence the expression 'sloe news day'.
June 17, 2015
fbharjo commented on the word sloe
I cotton sloe gin. It has a nice spinosa (and taste). It is plum good!
June 18, 2015
chained_bear commented on the word sloe
"Elder and hazelnuts were both high in nutritious fats, and at the Glastonbury Iron Age site, hundreds of sloe stones were identified, as well as the remains of raspberries, blackberries, cornel cherries, strawberries, dewberries, and hawthorn."
--Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 11-12
January 6, 2017