Wiktionary

mahogany

English edit

 
Swietenia mahagoni, a species of mahogany (sense 2)
 
mahogany (sense 1) sideboard, c. 1870
 
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Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

Borrowed from Malayalam മഹാഗണി (mahāgaṇi).

Pronunciation edit

  • (UK) IPA(key): /məˈhɒɡəni/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɒɡəni

Noun edit

mahogany (countable and uncountable, plural mahoganies)

  2. (uncountable) The valuable wood of any of various tropical American evergreen trees, of the genus Swietenia, mostly used to make furniture. [from 17th c.]
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
      A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away […] .
  4. (countable) Any of the trees from which such wood comes. [from 18th c.]
  5. (regional) A Cornish drink made from gin and treacle. [from 18th c.]
    • 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 178:
      William Murdoch […] produced a bottle of port; but I chose mahogany (two parts gin and one part treacle, which Lord Eliot made us at Sir Joshua Reynolds's as a Cornish liquor, but it seems they make it also with brandy, and often add porter to it).
  6. A reddish-brown color, like that of mahogany wood. [from 19th c.]
    mahogany:  
  7. (obsolete, colloquial) A table made from mahogany wood; a dining table. [19th c.]
    • 1842, Dublin University Magazine: A Literary and Political Journal:
      Poets eat and drink without stint — and seldom at their own cost — for what man of mark or likelihood in the moneyed world is there, who is not eager to get their legs under his mahogany?
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
      Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany  […]

Derived terms edit

Descendants edit

  • → German: Mahagoni

Translations edit

Adjective edit

mahogany (comparative more mahogany, superlative most mahogany)

  1. Made of mahogany.
  2. Having the colour of mahogany; dark reddish-brown.

References edit

  • “mahogany”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams edit

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