Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun In the Bible, the food miraculously provided for the Israelites in the wilderness during their flight from Egypt.
- noun Spiritual nourishment of divine origin.
- noun Something of value that a person receives unexpectedly.
- noun A dried exudate of certain plants, especially the Eurasian ash tree Fraxinus ornus, formerly used as a laxative.
- noun A sweet granular substance excreted on the leaves of plants by certain insects, especially scale insects and aphids, sometimes harvested for food.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The food by which the children of Israel were sustained in the wilderness (Ex. xvi. 14-36; Num. xi. 6, 7).
- noun Hence Delicious food for either the body or the mind; delectable material for nourishment or entertainment.
- noun Divine or spiritual food.
- noun In pharmacy, a sweet concrete juice obtained by incisions made in the stem of Fraxinus Ornus, a native of Sicily, Calabria, and other parts of the south of Europe, and from other species of ash.
- noun The secretion of the tamarisk, Tamarix Gallica, var. mannifera. It is a honey-like liquid which exudes from punctures made by an insect, hardens on the stems, and drops to the ground. It is collected by the Arabs as a delicacy.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Script.) The food supplied to the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness of Arabia; hence, divinely supplied food.
- noun (Bot.) A name given to lichens of the genus Lecanora, sometimes blown into heaps in the deserts of Arabia and Africa, and gathered and used as food; called also
manna lichen . - noun (Bot. & Med.) A sweetish exudation in the form of pale yellow friable flakes, coming from several trees and shrubs and used in medicine as a gentle laxative, as the secretion of
Fraxinus Ornus , andFraxinus rotundifolia , the manna ashes of Southern Europe. - noun (Zoöl) a scale insect (
Gossyparia mannipara ), which causes the exudation of manna from the Tamarix tree in Arabia.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Food
miraculously produced for theIsraelites in thedesert in the book ofExodus . - noun By extension, any good thing which comes into one's hands by luck or good fortune.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun hardened sugary exudation of various trees
- noun (Old Testament) food that God gave the Israelites during the Exodus
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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Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way Of starved people] [Shakespeare is not more exact in any thing, than in adapting his images with propriety to his speakers; of which he has here given an instance in making the young Jewess call good fortune, _manna_.
Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies Samuel Johnson 1746
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They also took some oil they consider holy manna from a chinese place w/o asking for permission and were ribbed for stealing.
Greasy Rider (copy) ____Maggie 2009
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In Republican legend, there was once a great warrior who could drink a quart of vodka, play 18 holes of golf and still be able to deny humanity while receiving much manna from the Wall Street demons.
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She participated in her early days as a web designer in some of the same lists that I do, and she was so eager to learn it was something to watch — she sucked up new information like it was manna from the gods.
Web Teacher › Review: Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 2008
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But because everyone was asking the same question, the strange milky white ground cover was called manna in ancient Hebrew, manna means “What is it?” as noted in Exodus 16:15, 31.
Mysteries & Intrigues of the Bible Howard Books 2007
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But because everyone was asking the same question, the strange milky white ground cover was called manna in ancient Hebrew, manna means “What is it?” as noted in Exodus 16:15, 31.
Mysteries & Intrigues of the Bible Howard Books 2007
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But because everyone was asking the same question, the strange milky white ground cover was called manna in ancient Hebrew, manna means “What is it?” as noted in Exodus 16:15, 31.
Mysteries & Intrigues of the Bible Howard Books 2007
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But because everyone was asking the same question, the strange milky white ground cover was called manna in ancient Hebrew, manna means “What is it?” as noted in Exodus 16:15, 31.
Mysteries & Intrigues of the Bible Howard Books 2007
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What we call manna croup is also used in a variety of ways.
Fred Markham in Russia The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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But as to the derivation of the word manna, whether from man, which Josephus says then signified What is it or from mannah, to divide, i.e., a dividend or portion allotted to every one, it is uncertain: I incline to the latter derivation.
Antiquities of the Jews Flavius Josephus 1709
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