Definitions

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

  • noun The dried acorn cups of an oak tree (Quercus macrolepis) of the eastern Mediterranean, used chiefly in tanning and dyeing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The commercial name for the acorn-cups of the valonia-oak, which are imported into Great Britain in large quantities from Asia Minor and Greece for use in tanning, dyeing, and making ink.

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

  • noun The acorn cup of two kinds of oak (Quercus macrolepis, and Quercus vallonea) found in Eastern Europe. It contains an abundance of tannin, and is much used by tanners and dyers.
  • noun (Bot.) A genus of marine green algæ, in which the whole frond consists of a single oval or cylindrical cell, often an inch in length.

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

  • noun The European evergreen oak, Quercus macrolepis or Quercus aegilops
  • noun The dried acorn cups of this tree, that are used to make a black dye, used in tanning

Etymologies

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

[Italian vallonea, vallonia, from Modern Greek balánia, pl. of baláni, variant of beláni, acorn, from Greek balanos.]

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Examples

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  • "A specially commissioned report, commending 'the alluvial nature of the soil', listed the valley's crops 'of all kinds from the rarest to the coarsest qualities. Tobacco, the fig, the vine, the olive, the poppy, the cotton plant and mulberry tree are all indigenous products, whilst maize, barley, beans, flax, hemp and a variety of pulse and oleaginous seeds are raised in large quantities. Valonia, yellow-berries, wool, goats' hair, dyestuffs, drugs, skins, honey, wax and likewise abound.' The only hindrance was the primitive condition of the region's Ottoman infrastructure; by revolutionising the pre-industrial carriage of the valley's largely perishable produce, the railway company's backers meant to make a killing."

    Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 270 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition

    September 1, 2012