butternut
noun
Simple meaning
North American walnut tree having light-brown wood and edible nuts.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
buhternuhtSay the bold part a little louder.
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.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
North American walnut tree having light-brown wood and edible nuts; source of a light-brown dye
A North American walnut tree, Juglans cinerea.
Oily egg-shaped nut of an American tree of the walnut family
The nut of this walnut tree.
The wood or bark of this walnut tree.
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.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Plant bearing buff-colored squash having somewhat bottle-shaped fruit with fine-textured edible flesh and a smooth thin rind.
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.
