Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A cultivated grass (Sorghum bicolor) native to sub-Saharan Africa, several varieties of which are widely grown for their grain, as forage, or as a source of syrup.
  • noun Syrup made from the juice of this plant.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A plant of the former genus Sorghum, commonly the cultivated saccharine plant once known as Sorghum (or Holcus) saccharatum, lately considered a variety of S. vulgare, but now classified as Andropogon Sorghum, var. saccharatus.
  • noun A former genus of grasses, of the tribe Andropogoneæ, now included as a subgenus in Andropogon (Edouard Hackel, 1889).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A genus of grasses, properly limited to two species, Sorghum Halepense, the Arabian millet, or Johnson grass (see Johnson grass), and S. vulgare, the Indian millet (see Indian millet, under Indian).
  • noun A variety of Sorghum vulgare, grown for its saccharine juice; the Chinese sugar cane.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A cereal, Sorghum vulgare or Sorghum bicolor, the grains of which are used to make flour and as cattle feed.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun made from juice of sweet sorghum
  • noun economically important Old World tropical cereal grass
  • noun annual or perennial tropical and subtropical cereal grasses: sorghum

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Sorghum, genus name, from Italian sorgo, a tall cereal grass, probably from Medieval Latin surgum, perhaps variant of Vulgar Latin *syricum, from neuter of Latin Syricus, Syrian, from Syria, Syria.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin genus name Sorghum, from Italian sorgo, from Vulgar Latin *Syricum ("Syrian").

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  • See fennel

    February 23, 2008