nicker seed

9.9

Hard shiny grey seed from a tropical tree that people use to make jewelry and decorations

noun

: semilla de bonduc

Many artisans use nicker seed to create unique pieces of jewelry.

Examples

She wore a necklace made of polished nicker seeds collected from the beach.
The children spent the afternoon searching for nicker seeds in the sand dunes.
The nicker seed is shiny.
I love nicker seeds!
Many artisans use nicker seed to create beautiful jewelry and decorative items.
She crafted a bracelet from brightly colored nicker seeds she found during her travels.
The local market showcased various products made from nicker seeds, attracting many tourists.

Synonyms

bonduc nut

vsnicker seed

Australian

9.9

A hard shiny gray seed often used to make necklaces and beads

has identical meaning but uses a different traditional name

nicker nut

vsnicker seed

9.9

A hard shiny grey seed from a tree often used to make jewelry

has the same sense but is an alternative spelling or name

Surface Forms

nicker seed singular

nicker seeds plural

Morphology

nicker + seed

The modifier 'nicker' is a lexicalized plant name (not a transparent English adjective) and is not defined here, so knowing 'seed' alone does not allow a learner to infer the specific sense 'hard, shiny, grey seed of the bonduc tree.' This is a culture-specific or botanical lexical item whose meaning cannot be compositionally derived from its parts, so a B1 learner would not be able to predict the MWE's meaning without prior exposure.

Etymology

Nicker seed may come from a simple beach story: sailors and beach collectors found hard, shiny grey seeds and used them as natural 'beads' and game counters. They would string the smooth seed and call them nicker, so the name came to mean the small grey 'seed' used for 'jewelry' and decoration.