Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The tropical American plant Nicotiana tabacum of the nightshade family, widely cultivated for its leaves, which are used primarily for smoking.
- noun The leaves of this plant, dried and processed chiefly for use in cigarettes, cigars, or snuff or for smoking in pipes.
- noun Any of various other plants of the genus Nicotiana.
- noun Products made from these plants.
- noun The habit of smoking tobacco.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The mouse-ear everlasting, Antennaria plantaginifolia.
- noun a variety with a broad, short leaf grown in two counties in Indiana, used for making common cigars.
- noun In Queensland, the name is also applied to the pituri, Duboisia Hopwoodii. See
pituri . - noun In Tasmania, a shrub of the aster family, Cassinia spectabilis.
- noun A commercial subdivision of the white Burley (see below) consisting of the darker, heavier leaves.
- noun Sometimes a brand of tobacco (see
return , n., 5). One such is known as bird's-eye returns. - noun A plant of the genus Nicotiana, particularly one of several species affording the narcotic product of the same name.
- noun The leaves of the tobacco-plant prepared in various forms, to be smoked, chewed, or used as snuff (see
Snuff ). - noun Same as
Indian tobacco . See above.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) An American plant (
Nicotiana Tabacum ) of the Nightshade family, much used for smoking and chewing, and as snuff. As a medicine, it is narcotic, emetic, and cathartic. Tobacco has a strong, peculiar smell, and an acrid taste. - noun The leaves of the plant prepared for smoking, chewing, etc., by being dried, cured, and manufactured in various ways.
- noun (Zoöl.) the common American skate.
- noun (Chem.) See
Nicotianine . - noun [R.] a tobacconist.
- noun (Bot.) Same as Indian pipe, under
Indian . - noun (Min.) a species of clay used in making tobacco pipes; -- called also
cimolite . - noun (Zoöl.) See
Pipemouth . - noun a small plug for pressing down the tobacco in a pipe as it is smoked.
- noun (Zoöl.) the larva of a large hawk moth (
Sphinx Carolina syn.Phlegethontius Carolina ). It is dark green, with seven oblique white stripes bordered above with dark brown on each side of the body. It feeds upon the leaves of tobacco and tomato plants, and is often very injurious to the tobacco crop. SeeIllust. ofHawk moth .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable Any plant of the genus
Nicotiana . - noun uncountable Leaves of certain varieties of the plant cultivated and harvested to make
cigarettes ,cigars ,snuff , for smoking inpipes or forchewing . - noun countable A variety of tobacco.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun aromatic annual or perennial herbs and shrubs
- noun leaves of the tobacco plant dried and prepared for smoking or ingestion
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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Suppose Count Mercier wished to say that he was sorry that his tobacco had been captured by the foe, why should he couch it in such language as, 'Thá mee ongan hréowan thaet mín _tobacco_ on feónda geweald feran sceolde' -- which is the good _old_ Anglo-Saxon idiom. '
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Furthermore, and oh, you tobacco users, take heed: _we would not be permitted to take in any tobacco_.
The People of the Abyss Jack London 1896
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Or without the smoking, to breathe where tobacco is burnt, -- _that_ calms the nervous system in a wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was tranquillized in one half hour by a _pinch_ of _tobacco_ being burnt in a shovel near me.
The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 Robert Browning 1850
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It was returning to the gratification of a depraved appetite in the use of tobacco; and I have no hesitancy in declaring it as my opinion, that could the causes of the many acts of suicide, committed in the United States, be investigated, it would be found, that many instances were owing to the effects of _tobacco_ upon the nervous system.
An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health 1823
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Though every lover of tobacco is not a slave to rum, yet _almost every drunkard is a slave to tobacco_; and this is indirect evidence that the habits are in a manner associated, or have a sort of natural affinity.
A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco Moses Stuart 1816
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_tobacco_ ones (except those actually employed in raising tobacco) now spread over those parts of our territories to the
Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates 1772 Great Britain. Board of Trade
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Had A.C. M. recollected that tobacco (_Nicotiana_) is an American plant, he would hardly have asked whether "_tobacco_ is the word in the original" of the tradition mentioned by Sale in his _Preliminary Discourse_, § 5.p. 123. (4to. ed.
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The rise of the use of marijuana in the United States has brought about the use of the term tobacco cigarette.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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The rise of the use of marijuana in the United States has brought about the use of the term tobacco cigarette.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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The rise of the use of marijuana in the United States has brought about the use of the term tobacco cigarette.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
testudoaubreii commented on the word tobacco
Stephen Maturin on tobacco:'For me tobacco is the crown of the meal, the best opening to a day, a great enhancer of the quality of life. The crackle and yield of this little paper cylinder,' he said, holding it up, 'gives me a sensual pleasure whose deeper origins I blush to contemplate, while the slow combustion of the whole yields a gratification that I should not readily abandon even if it did me harm, which it does not. Far from it. On the contrary, tobacco purges the mind of its gross humors, sharpens the wits, renders the judicious smoker sprightly and vivacious. And soon I shall need all my sprightliness and vivacity.'
- Stephen Maturin, in Patrick O'Brian's "The Ionian Mission"
December 7, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word tobacco
"The chili was only one of several new stimulants competing for attention. A craving for tobacco swept the world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with coffee and tea following not far behind. Although sugar had been known in the Middle Ages (classed, incidentally, as a spice and used largely for medical purposes), its consumption began to increase dramatically from the sixteenth century on. Late in the century, sugar began to be mass-produced in Brazil and somewhat later in the West Indies, the apparent result a general sweetening of the Western palate, an upward curve that has continued, much to the cost of our teeth and the profit of our dentists, to this day. The carousing cavaliers of the great Dutch artists endured a dental hell. Sugar had something of the glamour and forbidden attraction formerly reserved to spices, and its air of dangerous newness probably did no harm to its attraction."
--Jack Turner, _Spice: The History of a Temptation_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 300
December 6, 2016