hickory nut
1
5.6
- noun
- /ˈhɪkəri nʌt/
- US
- We used hickory nuts to make a delicious pie that everyone loved.
- pecans and hickory nuts
- acorns and hickory nuts
Examples
-
To bring folks up to speed, I have picked out six and a half pints of hickory nuts, four pints of pecans, and am up to one and a half pints of black walnuts, all for holiday cooking.
Blog text (6) -
She gathered black walnuts, pecans, and hickory nuts in the woods.
Academic text (1990) -
"Here, have a hickory nut instead."
Fiction book (1999) -
My hickory nuts, when cracked open, had nothing in them this year.
Blog text (12) -
And of course, there are always hickory nuts and black walnuts to gather this time of year.
Blog text (12) -
We used corncobs for noses and hickory nuts for eyes.
Fiction book (1991) -
Ordered a nutcracker from Lehmans just last week to help me with the pounds and pounds of hickory nuts and walnuts I'm gleaning from the pasture edges.
Blog text (12) -
Even maple and ash seeds, with their helicopter-like samaras, may float only a few dozen yards on the wind, while larger seeds, such as acorns, beechnuts, and hickory nuts, drop like stones.
Academic text (2002) -
The squirrels were busy gathering hickory nuts for the winter.
-
In the fall, we went hiking and collected hickory nuts along the trail.
Synonyms
61
1.0
A hard-shelled nut with a wrinkled two-part inside that you eat
29
2.6
A shiny brown nut with a hard shell and sweet taste that you can eat
9
2.3
An edible seed from some pine trees used in cooking and baking
2
8.9
The edible nut from a hazel tree
1
6.7
A small hazel tree or the round brown nuts it gives that you can eat
1
6.0
A North American tree that produces edible nuts and useful wood
1
8.0
A small sweet triangular nut from a beech tree
1
9.9
A North American tree that makes bitter edible nuts
An edible seed from some pine trees like Swiss pine used in cooking or as a snack
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: it refers to the edible nut produced by a hickory tree, which a learner can infer from 'hickory' (a tree) + 'nut' (an edible hard‑shelled seed). This noun+noun compounding follows common English (and cross‑linguistic) patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand the MWE.
Etymology
The compound hickory nut comes from the simple picture of a nut that grows on the hickory tree. People, including Native Americans and early settlers, would gather and eat these hard nuts, so the name now means 'the edible, hard-shelled nut of hickory trees'.