groundnut

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a peanut, especially when regarded as a crop or used to make oil

   The cooperative presses locally grown groundnuts to produce cooking oil.

2. 2
   noun

   a climbing eastern North American vine, Apios americana, or its edible tubers

   The groundnut twined through the shrubs and produced strings of edible tubers underground.

A compound of ground and nut, applied to edible seeds or tubers produced underground. It commonly denotes the peanut in British and international usage, but in eastern North America it also names Apios americana, the tuber-bearing vine growing around Walden Pond.

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