Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In Ecuador and Peru, the name of Guilielma speciosa, Astrocaryum Chonta, and other prickly, pinnately leaved palms with heavy hard black wood, which is used by the Indians of the Marañon and its tributaries for making spears, war-clubs, bows, and arrow-points.
- noun A wooden hoe used in Peru and Bolivia; also, now an iron of similar shape.
Etymologies
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Examples
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There follows a long unnamed gap in the Waorani year until the chonta season, which lasts six months, comes again in November.
One River Wade Davis 1996
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The year begins in our month of April when the fruiting cycle of the chonta, or peach palm, ends.
One River Wade Davis 1996
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The year begins in our month of April when the fruiting cycle of the chonta, or peach palm, ends.
One River Wade Davis 1996
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There follows a long unnamed gap in the Waorani year until the chonta season, which lasts six months, comes again in November.
One River Wade Davis 1996
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The clump of chonta trees grew a good five miles from the windfall.
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Then the troop clumsily made its way over the swaying branches and sought a friendly shelter in the crown of a chonta palm.
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What was far more important was that the peccary herds fed on the chonta nuts and were sure to be in the neighborhood of their favorite feeding-grounds.
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Suma knew where the round, red chonta nuts grew and that they ripened during the season of rains; and that even now the ground was covered with the tasty morsels.
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The strips of the shell of the chonta are selected, cut to the right length, and smoothed to a thickness of approximately an inch by the removal of the pith, being split to a breadth of an inch and a half.
Head Hunters of the Amazon: Seven Years of Exploration and Adventure 1923
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At times we gathered the fruit from a chonta palm, a yellow mealy fruit, of the texture and (more or less) the taste of a roast chestnut.
Head Hunters of the Amazon: Seven Years of Exploration and Adventure 1923
yarb commented on the word chonta
Plied down the Pyrene River in wild Peru,
Indian, Quinchori, built twenty rafts for us,
bartered with five rolls of cloth, knives and ornaments,
balsa logs pinned with hard splinters of chonta wood,
spray flew on all sides up, rainbowing rays of sun...
- Peter Reading, Wandering, from Tom O' Bedlam's Beauties, 1981
June 28, 2008