persimmon
/pəˈsɪmən
/noun
1An edible fruit that resembles a large tomato and has very sweet flesh.Among foods featured are morels, persimmons, cherries, game, wild blackberries, and asparagus....
- The produce includes strawberries, beans, avocado, persimmon, kiwifruit, oranges and other citrus fruit as well as flowers and plants.
- They taste a bit like persimmons, or maybe apricots - I wonder if they are available in the States.
2The tree which yields the persimmon, related to ebony.
- Genus Diospyros, family Ebenaceae: the evergreen American D. virginiana, with dark red fruit, and the Japanese persimmon (D. kaki), cultivated for its orange fruit.
- Sitting by our persimmon tree last fall I watched a robin stretch out to peck off a piece of the bright, ripe fruit.
- Cold-tolerant persimmons are small, beautiful trees that yield small, sweet fruit harvested in the fall.
Origin
Early 17th century: alteration of Algonquian pessemmins.