Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A poisonous tree (Metopium toxiferum) of southern Florida and the West Indies, having pinnately compound leaves, yellow-green flowers, and yellow-orange fruit, and causing a rash on contact.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small poisonous tree, Rhus Metopium, of the West Indies and southern Florida, whose bark yields upon incision a gum with emetic, purgative, and diuretic properties. Also called burnwood, coral-sumac, mountain manchineel,hog-plum,etc.
- noun A small euphorbiaceous tree, Sebastiania lucida, of the same habitat
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Metopium toxiferum, a
species oftree found in theAmerican neotropics known for producing the irritanturushiol .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Spend enough time with all those stoners and smugglers and ex-cons and sugar cane tycoons and telemarketers and televangelists, and you'll swear they must have crawled straight from the Florida swamps, hissing, wreathed in poisonwood.
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When I was in high school, we never got to read things like the poisonwood bible.
readersguide Diary Entry readersguide 2006
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I'm reading 'The poisonwood bible' by Barbra Kingsolver about an American family who settle in a Congolese village in the sixties trying to spread the word of God-well the father anyway, the rest cant be bothered.
Archive 2005-01-01 Minzo 2005
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I'm reading 'The poisonwood bible' by Barbra Kingsolver about an American family who settle in a Congolese village in the sixties trying to spread the word of God-well the father anyway, the rest cant be bothered.
What's going down...what's going around..I'm climbing the wall Minzo 2005
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An ivylike beauty identified quaintly as poisonwood.
Blood Test Jonathan Kellerman 1986
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An ivylike beauty identified quaintly as poisonwood.
Blood Test Jonathan Kellerman 1986
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An ivylike beauty identified quaintly as poisonwood.
Blood Test Jonathan Kellerman 1986
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An ivylike beauty identified quaintly as poisonwood.
Blood Test Kellerman, Jonathan 1986
hernesheir commented on the word poisonwood
The eroded, corky and flinty internal tissues of this tree are commonly encountered as drift on the eastern beaches of penninsular Florida, carried there and to points north by the Gulf Stream.
December 16, 2010