Other forms: coconuts
A coconut is a hard brown tropical fruit with white flesh and water inside. Crack a coconut, coconut milk, coconut water.
Coconut water is the liquid inside and coconut milk is made by pressing the grated flesh, which is a distinction recipes depend on. The shell floats and stays viable for months at sea, which is how the palm reached islands across the Pacific. The name comes from a Portuguese word for a grinning face, from the three marks on the shell.
1nouncoconutA hard brown tropical fruit with white flesh.
“We sat under the palm trees, watching a boy climb up to pick coconuts.”
coconut is a fruit.
Coco plus nut. Portuguese coco meant a grinning face, from the three marks on the shell that look like eyes and a mouth.
From coco + nut. In reference to assimilated Hispanic or black people, derived from the fruit's exotic origins. The slur originates from the idea that one is "brown on the outside, white on the inside". In reference to Polynesians, from the ubiquity of coconut palms in the area.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA