Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A tall tropical African annual plant (Abelmoschus esculentus) in the mallow family, widely cultivated in warm regions for its edible, mucilaginous green pods.
- noun The edible pods of this plant, used in soups and stews and as a vegetable.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A plant, Hibiscus esculentus, an esteemed vegetable, cultivated in the East and West Indies, the southern United States, etc. See
gumbo .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) An annual plant (
Abelmoschus esculentus syn.Hibiscus esculentus ), whose green pods, abounding in nutritious mucilage, are much used for soups, stews, or pickles; gumbo. - noun The pods of the plant okra, used as a vegetable; also, a dish prepared with them; gumbo.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
annual plant, Abelmoschus esculentus, possibly ofEthiopian origin, grown for itsedible pods .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun long mucilaginous green pods; may be simmered or sauteed but used especially in soups and stews
- noun long green edible beaked pods of the okra plant
- noun tall coarse annual of Old World tropics widely cultivated in southern United States and West Indies for its long mucilaginous green pods used as basis for soups and stews; sometimes placed in genus Hibiscus
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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I have been up to my ears in okra the past two weeks with more on its way.
Spicy pickled okra | Homesick Texan Homesick Texan 2009
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But surprisingly, I found them more than adequate — I actually enjoyed eating them and was thankful that I had more than one jar as I learned that I my friend was correct — pickled okra is indeed a very good thing.
Spicy pickled okra | Homesick Texan Homesick Texan 2009
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I only started eating fried okra a few years ago (though have since made up for much lost time) and pickled okra is an even more recent addition to my table.
Spicy pickled okra | Homesick Texan Homesick Texan 2009
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* In my yankee opinion, the best use of okra is as an ingredient for puke.
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Bring the water to a boil and cook 15 minutes or until the dried okra is half cooked.
Ingredient: Dried Okra (with Recipe for Armenian Okra & Meat in Tangy Tomato Sauce) Laurie Constantino 2007
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Cleaning normal size okra is time-consuming; cleaning okra so much smaller seemed as if it would be interminable.
Archive 2007-10-01 Laurie Constantino 2007
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And okra is in such abundance now I'm game to give pickling them a try!
With patience comes pickles | Homesick Texan Homesick Texan 2007
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Bring the water to a boil and cook 15 minutes or until the dried okra is half cooked.
Archive 2007-10-01 Laurie Constantino 2007
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I pick a few for a meal because okra is not such a hot favorite with my DH.
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Cook in the oven till the okra is cooked and starts to attain a brown shade.
reesetee commented on the word okra
For anyone who knows only European languages, to wade into Arabic is to discover an endlessly strange and yet oddly ordered lexical universe. Some words have definitions that go on for pages and seem to encompass all possible meanings; others are outlandishly precise. Paging through the dictionary one night, I found a word that means “to cut off the upper end of an okra.�? -- "Arabic Lessons," Robert F. Worth, New York Times, Jan. 6, 2008
January 10, 2008
yarb commented on the word okra
But what WAS that word?!
January 10, 2008
skipvia commented on the word okra
What yarb said. I spent a lot of my early years doing exactly that (okra grows in profusion in South Carolina) and now I want to know what to call it.
January 10, 2008
sionnach commented on the word okra
"Circumcise"? Which would make skipvia an okra-mohel I think there's a song about it:
OOOOOOOO-KRA-MOHEL ......
January 10, 2008
reesetee commented on the word okra
Apparently the author means to torture us by not telling us what the word is. Otherwise, you can be sure I'd have Wordiefied it!
January 10, 2008
reesetee commented on the word okra
Good grief, sionnach, what are they feeding you these days? ;-)
January 10, 2008
sionnach commented on the word okra
Hmmm. Now I have this ineradicable image of Johnny Depp playing skipvia in "Skipvia: the demon mohel of Charleston"
January 10, 2008
skipvia commented on the word okra
Actually, Charleston is not my okra-homa. It's Rock Hill.
Many people point out how much I resemble Johnny Depp. Which is not at all.
January 10, 2008
seanahan commented on the word okra
That's a great article from the New York Times, which for me is saying a lot, since I have very little respect for that paper.
January 10, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word okra
skipvia, I'm sure you resemble Johnny Depp in many ways---and at least one of them is "not at all." ;)
OHHHHHHHKRA-MOHEL where the wind comes sweepin' down the ... well. Those lyrics don't really work. *earworm alert!*
January 10, 2008
jennarenn commented on the word okra
Amazing. We've found something just a little too weird for Weird Al.
January 10, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word okra
Great. Now every time I see this word, apparently, I'm going to start singing sionnach's song. *humming* ohhhhhhh-kra-mohel...
January 10, 2008
reesetee commented on the word okra
I still want to know what the Arabic word is for “to cut off the upper end of an okra.�?
*wondering and humming*
January 10, 2008
hernesheir commented on the word okra
The first definition herein incorrectly refers okra to the pods/fruits of a leguminous plant. Okra is a member of the Malvaceae, or mallow family of plants.
Elsewhere this term refers to the soft, edible, beaked, mucilaginous green capsular fruits of Abelmoschus esculentus, a.k.a. Hibiscus esculentus, and lady fingers. The green pods are either battered and fried, or stewed (commonly with diced tomatoes and onions), or used as an ingredient and thickener (due to its mucilage) in gumbo in the southern US and elsewhere.
January 4, 2009
ruzuzu commented on the word okra
Is it lady fingers or ladies' fingers?
March 27, 2014