Definitions

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

  • noun The fruit of an oak, consisting of a single-seeded, thick-walled nut set in a woody, cuplike base.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The fruit of the oak; a one-celled, one-seeded, coriaceous, rounded or elongated nut, the base of which is surrounded by an indurated scaly cup.
  • noun Nautical, a small ornamental piece of wood, of a conical or globular shape, sometimes fixed on the point of the spindle above the vane, on a masthead, to keep the vane from being blown off.
  • noun Any similar ornamental tip.
  • noun Same as acorn-shell, 2.

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

  • noun The fruit of the oak, being an oval nut growing in a woody cup or cupule.
  • noun (Naut.) A cone-shaped piece of wood on the point of the spindle above the vane, on the mast-head.
  • noun (Zoöl.) See Acorn-shell.

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

  • noun The fruit of the oak, being an oval nut growing in a woody cup or cupule.
  • noun nautical A cone-shaped piece of wood on the point of the spindle above the vane, on the mast-head.
  • noun zoology See acorn-shell.

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

  • noun fruit of the oak tree: a smooth thin-walled nut in a woody cup-shaped base

Etymologies

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

[Middle English akorn, from Old English æcern.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English acorne, an alteration (after corn) of earlier akern, from Old English æcern ("acorn, oak-mast"), from Proto-Germanic *akranan, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ógeh₂- (“berry”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Äkkene, Flemish aker, Danish agern; and with Irish áirne ("sloe"), Lithuanian úoga, Russian ягода (jágoda, "berry").

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