Definitions

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

  • noun Any of several deciduous trees of the genus Juglans, having pinnately compound leaves and fruits with a rounded sticky husk that encloses an edible seed with a hard shell.
  • noun The nut or corrugated seed of any of these trees.
  • noun The hard, dark brown wood of any of these trees, used for gunstocks and in cabinetwork.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The fruit of the nut-bearing tree Juglans regia; also, the tree itself, or its wood.
  • noun In the United States, frequently, same as black walnut and rock-walnut (the fruit, the tree, or its wood). See below.
  • noun In parts of New York, New England, and some other lo calities, same as hickory-nut or hickory. This is sometimes distinguished as shagbark or shell-bark walnut.
  • In the West Indies, a name often applied to the angelin or cabbage-tree, Vouacapoua Americana, from its resemblance in leaf and fruit to the English walnut. See cabbage-tree, 2, and Andira.

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

  • noun (Bot.) The fruit or nut of any tree of the genus Juglans; also, the tree, and its timber. The seven or eight known species are all natives of the north temperate zone.
  • noun a tree (Juglans fraxinifolia), native in Transcaucasia.
  • noun a North American tree (Juglans nigra) valuable for its purplish brown wood, which is extensively used in cabinetwork and for gunstocks. The nuts are thick-shelled, and nearly globular.
  • noun a tree (Juglans regia), native of Asia from the Caucasus to Japan, valuable for its timber and for its excellent nuts, which are also called Madeira nuts.
  • noun a deep warm brown color, like that of the heartwood of the black walnut.
  • noun oil extracted from walnut meats. It is used in cooking, making soap, etc.
  • noun a North American tree (Juglans cinerea), bearing long, oval, thick-shelled, oily nuts, commonly called butternuts. See Butternut.

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

  • noun A hardwood tree of the genus Juglans.
  • noun A nut of the walnut tree.
  • noun Wood of the walnut tree.
  • noun Dark brown colour, the colour of walnut wood.
  • adjective Having a dark brown colour, the colour of walnut wood.

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

  • noun nut of any of various walnut trees having a wrinkled two-lobed seed with a hard shell
  • noun any of various trees of the genus Juglans
  • noun hard dark-brown wood of any of various walnut trees; used especially for furniture and paneling

Etymologies

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

[Middle English walnot, from Old English wealhhnutu : wealh, Celt, foreigner; see Welsh + hnutu, nut.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English walhhnutu, from Proto-Germanic *walhaz (“Celt, Roman, foreigner”) (whence Walloon, Welsh) + *hnutuz (whence nut). Cognate with Dutch walnoot, German Walnuss, Swedish valnöt. Compare more recent term Welsh onion, which also uses Welsh to mean “foreign”.

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