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butternut

noun

Simple meaning

North American walnut tree having light-brown wood and edible nuts.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

buhternuht

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈbʌtɚnət

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. North American walnut tree having light-brown wood and edible nuts; source of a light-brown dye

  2. A North American walnut tree, Juglans cinerea.

  3. Oily egg-shaped nut of an American tree of the walnut family

  4. The nut of this walnut tree.

  5. The wood or bark of this walnut tree.

  6. US19th century

    Southern settlers of the Ohio river basin, who used dye from the butternut tree to colour their home-made clothing

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Frequency
Rare
Typical Use
Primarily written

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

North / oily

butternut tree

Southern

butternut creek

Butternut

butternut squash

Other combinations

butternut pumpkinsmall butternutlarge butternutmedium butternutbutternut press

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • butternut squashnounCompound term

    Plant bearing buff-colored squash having somewhat bottle-shaped fruit with fine-textured edible flesh and a smooth thin rind.

  • butternut treenounCompound term

    North American walnut tree having light-brown wood and edible nuts.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.