death cap
- noun
- /dɛθ kæp/
:
hongo de la muerte
- You tracked down some death cap mushrooms, and baked 'em into a risotto that resembled Antonio's.
If you really want to know, it's probably the death cap mushroom.
- If you really want to know, it's probably the death cap mushroom.
Examples
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Apparently Wagner ate a poisonous mushroom called the "death cap."
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Last autumn, a family in the region fell seriously ill after consuming a dish that contained death cap mushrooms.
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Well, let's say we were looking for the death cap around here.
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If you really want to know, it's probably the death cap mushroom.
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These are death cap mushrooms.
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Does that include a mushroom called the "death cap"?
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Someone died from eating death caps, that were discarded downtown yesterday.
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There were death caps in the mushroom risotto Wagner ate here the day before he died.
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The death cap mushroom is highly toxic and can cause severe illness if eaten.
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Be cautious when foraging, as the death cap resembles several edible mushrooms.
Synonyms
A very poisonous pale mushroom with white gills and a cup-shaped base that can cause deadly liver damage
A very poisonous white mushroom that can kill you if you eat it
A very poisonous white mushroom that can kill you if eaten
A very poisonous white mushroom with a cup-shaped base and white gills that can kill if eaten
How Poisonous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'death' (lethal) + 'cap' (the upper part of a mushroom) yields the notion of a cap associated with death, i.e. a deadly mushroom. Given the provided sense of 'cap' as the mushroom's top, a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reasonably infer it refers to an extremely poisonous mushroom.
Etymology
Death cap comes from a simple image: the mushroom's top, the cap, can make people 'die' if they eat it. People who collect mushrooms learned this the hard way, so the name now means a very poisonous mushroom.