Coconut
nounThe large hard-shelled fruit of the coconut palm, containing white flesh and a watery liquid.
How to spell coconut
7 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce coconut
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does coconut mean?
- nounThe large hard-shelled fruit of the coconut palm, containing white flesh and a watery liquid.
Coconut in a sentence
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She cracked open a coconut to drink the water inside.
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The recipe calls for grated coconut and a little sugar.
Where does coconut come from?
Language of origin: Spanish
The first half of this word comes from the Portuguese and Spanish word coco, which literally meant 'grinning face', 'grimace', or 'bogeyman'. Sixteenth-century Portuguese sailors thought the three small dark indentations at the base of the hard shell looked like a little face, so they nicknamed the fruit coco. English speakers borrowed the word and simply tacked on the familiar native English word 'nut' to describe the object, giving 'coco-nut'. Botanically the coconut is not actually a true nut at all but a drupe, the same broad family as a plum. The single 'c' in the middle is the common spelling trap, since some writers mistakenly double it to 'cocoanut', an old archaic variant that has faded out of standard use.
How the word is built
- coco (from Portuguese/Spanish coco: grinning face/grimace)
- nut (English)
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