Citations:calabash
English citations of calabash
| 1851 | 2003 2009 | ||||||
| ME « | 15th c. | 16th c. | 17th c. | 18th c. | 19th c. | 20th c. | 21st c. |
- A tree (known as the calabash tree; Crescentia cujete) native to Central and South America, the West Indies, and southern Florida, bearing large, round fruit used to make containers (sense 3); the fruit of this tree.
- The bottle gourd (calabash vine, Lagenaria siceraria), believed to have originated in Africa which is grown for its fruit that are used as a vegetable and to make containers (sense 3); the fruit of this plant.
- A container made from the mature, dried shell of the fruit of one of the above plants; also, a similarly shaped container made from some other material.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Wheelbarrow”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 105:
- [I]t seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; […]
- 2003, Gabriel García Márquez, chapter 2, in Edith Grossman, transl., Living to Tell the Tale: Translated from the Spanish, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN:
- […] we would pour water from the tank over ourselves with a calabash and finish by splashing on the Agua Florida from Lanman & Kemps […]
- 2009 January 10, “It Must be True … I Read It in the Tabloids”, in Jeremy O’Grady, editor, The Week, number 697, page 12:
- Motorcyclists in Nigeria have taken to wearing dried pumpkins on their heads, to get round new laws forcing them to wear helmets. Road safety officials have warned that anyone caught wearing a dried pumpkin – or calabash – instead of a real (but expensive) helmet will have their bike impounded and be obliged to explain themselves in court.