runner bean
1
3.7
- noun
- UK
:
judía enredadera
- "No legs on a runner bean," said Ana, laughing.
- scarlet runner beans
- runner bean flowers
- runner beans vines
Examples
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Lisa sent me a link to purple runner beans, and I am going to paint them.
Blog text (8) -
Runner beans.
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"A runner bean?" asked Grandpa.
Fiction book (1997) -
Are these runner beans, broad beans?
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Those are scarlet runner beans, not even a true bean.
Fiction book (1990) -
Several other perennial beans, including runner beans, are suited to the highland tropics.
Blog text (1) -
There's carrots to peel, runner beans to dice, I'll make the gravy.
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Both species are tender to frost, though Ken Fern of Plants for a Future reports that runner beans re-sprout and yield for twenty years or more in England.
Blog text (1) -
And as the train chugged past row upon row of back gardens, strewn with dust bins, runner beans, and bits of broken furniture, I wondered what it would be like to live in a house again.
Fiction book (1994) -
Last summer, I grew runner beans alongside tomatoes in my garden.
Synonyms
A climbing plant with red flowers and long edible pods
A climbing bean plant with red flowers and long edible pods
A climbing bean plant that people grow for its beans and pods
A climbing bean plant from tropical America that lives for several years and has red flowers and edible pods
A bean plant with long pods that people cook and eat
How Climbing
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound transparently signals a subtype of bean (a bean that 'runs' or spreads), so a B1 learner who knows 'bean' and the general sense of 'runner' can infer it is a kind of bean/bean plant. However, the specific horticultural sense (a climbing/stolon-bearing bean with long pods and red flowers) and the botanical meaning of 'runner' may be unfamiliar, so the full meaning is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Runner bean may come from the word runner, because the plant's long vines seem to 'run' up poles and strings in the garden, and bean is the edible pod. That's why the name refers to a climbing bean grown for its long green pods.