释义 |
prickly pear The name given to various species of the cactaceous genus Opuntia, prickly plants with pear-shaped fleshy edible fruit; also the fruit itself. Formerly also prick-pear, prickle-pear, prickled pear.
1612W. Strachey Trav. Virginia (1849) i. x. 119 Here is a cherry-redd fruict both within and without..which wee call the prickle peare;..they beare a broad, thick, spungeous leafe, full of kernells. 1672W. Hughes Amer. Physitian 38 Most call it the Prickle-Pear Bush, and the fruit the Prickle-Pear. 1725H. Sloane Voy. Jamaica II. p. vi, Tab. VIII Shews..the sort of Prickly Pear, thought in Jamaica to be that particular kind of Opuntia, whereon feeds the small Worm or Beatle, from whence comes in Cochineel. 1760J. Lee Introd. Bot. App. 322 Prickly Pear, Cactus. 1764Grainger Sugar-Cane i. 536 On this lay cuttings of the prickly pear; They soon a formidable fence will shoot. 1825Gentle. Mag. XCV. i. 318 The Jack-fruit, sweet sops, sour sops, mannees, prickly pears. 1836J. Hildreth Dragoon Campaigns Rocky Mts. xvi. 141 It was covered with the prickle-pear. 1870Disraeli Lothair lxxvi, Gardens enclosed with hedges of prickly pear. 1877C. Geikie Christ (1879) 19 He will recognize such fruits as the lime, the banana, the almond, and the prickly pear. 1925T. S. Eliot Poems 1909–1925 98 Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear... At five o'clock in the morning. 1956C. Mackenzie Thin Ice iii. 36 We left Tangier about an hour before sunrise, riding through plantations of prickly pear. 1978G. D. Rowley in V. H. Heywood Flowering Plants of World 65/1 Opuntias (prickly pears) are grown commercially in parts of Mexico and California for their large juicy fruits. attrib.1672[see above]. 1739P. Delegal in Georgia Hist. Soc. Coll. (1840) I. 188 The islands in Georgia are full of the prickly pear shrubs which feed flies. 1832J. A. Heraud Voy. & Mem. Midshipm. ix. (1837) 174 An arid plain, with straggling hedges of prickley pear bushes. 1839Lett. fr. Madras (1843) 272 Prickly⁓pear hedges, enclosing black-looking Palmyra-trees. 1917Nature 20 Sept. 57/2 The prickly pear cactus (Opuntia tuna) has become extensively naturalised [in Hawaii]. 1974V. Nabokov Look at Harlequins (1975) i. iii. 12 We walked round the house, skirting prickly-pear shrubs. |