mesquite

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See also: Mesquite

English

a mesquite (Prosopis pallida, American carob)

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish mezquite, mizquite, from Nahuatl mizquitl (“mesquite tree”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /mɛsˈkiːt/, /ˈmɛskiːt/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Noun

mesquite (plural mesquites)

  1. Any of several deciduous trees of the genus Prosopis found in America, and used as forage, which have long, beige seed/bean pods which may be dried and ground into a sweet, nutty flour.
    • 1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 20:
      Between these canyons the river has a low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns.
    • 1909, Volney Morgan Spalding, Distribution and movements of desert plants‎:
      […] and no botanist could for a moment fail to recognize this fact, especially as just beyond its banks there is growing on every hand the mesquite, the everywhere-present species of the Lower Sonoran zone.
  2. The wood of these trees, used for smoking food, or charcoal made from this wood.
  3. Country or land dominated by mesquite trees.
    • 1957, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC:
      Tucson is situated in beautiful mesquite riverbed country, overlooked by the snowy Catalina range.
    • 1900, David Prescott Barrows, The ethno-botany of the Coahuilla Indians of Southern California‎:
      Southward and in the very center of the plain is La Mesa, hidden in the mesquite and with splendid, typically dug, wells.

Derived terms

Translations

References

Portuguese

Noun

mesquite f (plural mesquites)

  1. mesquite (any of the North-American deciduous trees of the genus Prosopis)

Spanish

Pronunciation

Noun

mesquite m (plural mesquites)

  1. (Mexico) Alternative spelling of mezquite

Further reading

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia