pineapple
/ˈpʌɪnap(ə)l
/noun
1A large juicy tropical fruit consisting of aromatic edible yellow flesh surrounded by a tough segmented skin and topped with a tuft of stiff leaves: roughly chop the pineapples and apricots [mass noun]: slices of pineapple...
- These consumers ‘customize’ Kool-Aid by adding oranges, grapes, pineapples, fruit juice, and club soda.
- Exotic foods such as potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, pineapples - fruits and vegetables of the New World, were unknown here.
- Fruit such as pineapples, coconuts, oranges, mangoes, bananas, apples, and lychees are subject to seasonal availability.
2The widely cultivated tropical American plant that bears the pineapple. It is low-growing, with a spiral of spiny sword-shaped leaves on a thick stem.
- Ananas comosus, family Bromeliaceae.
- Other species of Phytophthora destroy eucalyptus, avocado, pineapples, and other tropical crop plants.
- In the lush green foothills above town, I'd found every incline, even a slope that seemed too steep to climb, cultivated with longan, lychee, pineapple, betel nut or banana.
3 informal A hand grenade.He said the explosive was among three pineapple grenades and a mortar found by local residents over the past month, with the most recent discovery taking place on July 8....
- A second fighter then emerged, a pineapple grenade in each hand, with pins already pulled.
- Some weapons need a bit more consideration, for example, the pineapple grenade.
Phrases
the rough end of the pineapple
Origin
Late Middle English (denoting a pine cone): from pine1 + apple. The word was applied to the fruit in the mid 17th century, because of its resemblance to a pine cone.
The Latin pinus ‘pine tree’ had given the word for a pine tree to Old English, and originally a pine apple was the fruit of the pine tree, what we would now call a pine-cone. When the pineapple fruit was introduced in the early 17th century the overall shape and the segmented skin was felt to resemble a pine-cone and the name was transferred to it. See also grenade, pain