Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A deciduous European tree (Mespilus germanica) in the rose family, having white flowers and edible apple-shaped fruit.
- noun The fruit of this plant, eaten fresh or made into preserves.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small, generally bushy tree, Mespilus Germanica, related to the crab-apple, cultivated in gardens for its fruit. It is wild in central and southern Europe, but was introduced from western Asia. See
Mespilus . - noun The fruit of the above tree, resembling a small brown-skinned apple, but with a broad disk at the summit surrounded by the remains of the calyx-lobes.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A tree of the genus Mespilus (
Mespilus Germanica ); also, the fruit of the tree. The fruit is something like a small apple, but has a bony endocarp. When first gathered the flesh is hard and austere, and it is not eaten until it has begun to decay. - noun (Bot.) the loquat. See
Loquat . - noun (Bot.) a kind of thorn tree (
Cratægus Azarolus ); also, its fruit.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
tree of the genus Mespilus - noun the
fruit of the tree. The fruit is something like a small apple, and it is not eaten until it has begun to decay, or more properly,blet .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun small deciduous tree of southern Africa having edible fruit
- noun a South African globular fruit with brown leathery skin and pithy flesh having a sweet-acid taste
- noun crabapple-like fruit used for preserves
- noun small deciduous Eurasian tree cultivated for its fruit that resemble crab apples
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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His face was wrinkled and brown, like the exterior of that incomprehensible fruit the medlar, which is never ripe till it is bad, and then it is to be avoided.
The Slave of the Lamp Henry Seton Merriman 1882
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Three-course lunch/dinner for two with wine, about £90/£130 including 12.5 per cent service A medlar is a fruit that requires "bletting" to become edible.
Evening Standard - Home Fay Maschler 2011
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One of our men had got us a bag full of fruit, -- limes, zapotes, and nisperos, which last are a large kind of medlar, besides a number of other kinds of fruit, which we ate without knowing what they were.
Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern Edward Burnett Tylor
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She's also making preserves; traditional ones such as medlar jelly for serving with game, pear chutney, apple chutney, and lots of her own invention, which she plays around with and perfects.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2010
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They wanted me to be a schoolchild and ask basic questions, such as 'What is a medlar?'
Bernard Radfar: Texting Librarians Bernard Radfar 2011
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They wanted me to be a schoolchild and ask basic questions, such as 'What is a medlar?'
Bernard Radfar: Texting Librarians Bernard Radfar 2011
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They wanted me to be a schoolchild and ask basic questions, such as 'What is a medlar?'
Bernard Radfar: Texting Librarians Bernard Radfar 2011
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Try to resist this description: The medlar, which resembles a russeted crabapple with an open blossom end, is a pome fruit, kin to apples and pears, and most closely related to hawthorns.
Lunch Room Chatter: Produce is not downloadable Tim Carman 2010
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Of the two 2007 liqueurs that I decanted today, the bletted medlar one is good but a bit rough.
gillpolack: I have been undertaking quality control gillpolack 2009
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I'm making yummy historical edibles as well as encouraging people to drink wine and medlar liqueur.
Even in a little thing gillpolack 2009
bilby commented on the word medlar
"We be no windfals my Lord; ye must gather us with the ladder of matrimony, or we'l hang till we be rotten. Mons. Indeed that's the way to make ye right openarses... Farewell riddle. Gui. Farewell Medlar."
- 'Bussy d'Ambois III', G. Chapman, 1607.
December 15, 2007
BrainyBabe commented on the word medlar
Yes, it is also known as the open-arse. In Shakespeare's time the fruit was associated with sex, but for the Victorians it was connected to death. Medlars need to be bletted, the only use of that wonderful word.
December 23, 2008
myth commented on the word medlar
Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
O Romeo, that she were, O that she were
An open-arse and thou a pop'rin pear!
- Shakespeare
February 16, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word medlar
"In 1736, an English traveler in the Chesapeake recorded that 'we gathered a fruit, in our route, called a parsimon sic, of a very delicious taste, not unlike a medlar, tho' somewhat larger: I take it to be a very cooling fruit, and the settlers make use of prodigious quantities to sweeten a beer ... which is vastly wholesome.'"
—Sarah Hand Meacham, Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 38
June 9, 2010