MELON • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Melon

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/mˈɛlən/ Listen

noun

Melon n.

(Bot.) The juicy fruit of certain cucurbitaceous plants, as the muskmelon, watermelon, and citron melon; also, the plant that produces the fruit.

(Zool.) A large, ornamental, marine, univalve shell of the genus Melo.

Melon beetle (Zool.), a small leaf beetle (Diabrotiea vittata), which damages the leaves of melon vines.

Melon cactus, Melon thistle.

(a)

(Bot.) A genus of cactaceous plants (Melocactus) having a fleshy and usually globose stem with the surface divided into spiny longitudinal ridges, and bearing at the top a prickly and woolly crown in which the small pink flowers are half concealed. Melocactus communis, from the West Indies, is often cultivated, and sometimes called Turk's cap.

(b)

The related genus Mamillaria, in which the stem is tubercled rather than ribbed, and the flowers sometimes large.

See images of 'Melon'

Etymology of 'Melon'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Melon" Quotes from Famous Books

... of the long July days flooded the garden, glistening on the silken leaves of the corn, wilting the potato-blossoms, unfolding the bright yellow flowers of the okra and the melon, Tom would fain have pushed himself out into the full tide of light and heat. But his ...

— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... outlined by Mrs. Betty; and so the apparently unsuspecting Hepsey would find on her side porch in the morning some specially fine corn which had been placed there after dark without the name of the donor. Once a fine melon was accompanied by a bottle of perfumery; and again a basket of peaches had secreted in its center a package of toilet soap "strong enough to kill the grass," as Hepsey remarked as she sniffed at it. Finally matters reached a climax ...

— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... national sanity. Shaughnessy always liked to have a voice in national affairs. That was partly tradition. It also kept the public from remembering that the railway after all was a creature of government and of politics. It sometimes deflected public attention from the "melon" patch which was the Toronto World's sobriquet for the C.P.R. "pork barrel," and from the ever potential lobby maintained by the company at Ottawa. Of course lobbies are always repudiated. No self-respecting railway ever knows it by that name. There is no department ...

— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... back to the hotel together. Harrison was waiting for them on the porch. As soon as he caught sight of the cowpuncher he strode forward. The straight line of his set mouth looked like a gash in a melon. ...

— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... everything looked its best. The grass along the headlands was almost as tall as the corn; the Bathurst-burr, the Scotch-thistles, and the "stinking Roger" were taller. Grow! Dad never saw the like. Why, the cultivation was n't large enough to hold the melon and pumpkin vines—they travelled into the horse-paddock and climbed up trees and over logs and stumps, and they would have fastened on the horses only the horses were fat and fresh and often galloped about. And the stock! Blest if the old cows did n't carry udders like camp-ovens, ...

— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

More quotes...