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pecan

UK/piːˈkɑːn/<aa:most common <<US>> pronunciation except in New York, New England and coastal Southeast><ref:[http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_21.html The Dialect Survey], and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130606184957/http://spark-1590165977.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/jkatz/SurveyMaps/ Joshua Katz's maps of it]<<name:dialect>>>US/piːˈkɑːn/<aa:most common <<US>> pronunciation except in New York, New England and coastal Southeast><ref:[http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_21.html The Dialect Survey], and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130606184957/http://spark-1590165977.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/jkatz/SurveyMaps/ Joshua Katz's maps of it]<<name:dialect>>>
nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,532 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: pecans

A pecan is a long wrinkled nut used in sweet pies. Pecan pie, toasted pecans, a bag of pecans.

It is native to North America and the trees take years to bear, then crop heavily every other year. The pronunciation is argued about across the American south with real feeling. The name came from an Algonquian word for a hard-shelled nut.

Bruce Marlin · CC BY 3.0

Definitions of pecan

  1. 1nounpecanA long wrinkled nut used in sweet dishes.B2

    “She baked a pecan pie for Thanksgiving.”

pecan is a nut.

Where it comes from

French pacane comes from an Algonquian word meaning a nut needing a stone to crack.

  1. French

    pacane

  2. English, today

    pecan

French pacane and at first spelt paccan. The French word derives from an alg - word, perhaps mia - (Illinois) pakani. Compare cr pakan (“hard nut”), oj bagaan, Abenaki pagann, bagôn, pagôn (“nut; walnut, hazelnut”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Food & Drink

Practise this word

pecan in the wild

  • The seed is an edible nut used as a snack and in various recipes, such as praline candy and pecan pie.

    Pecan

  • The pecan is the state nut of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Texas, and Louisiana, and is also the state tree of Texas.

    Pecan

  • Pecan pie is a pie of pecan nuts mixed with a filling of eggs, butter and sugar (typically corn syrup).

    Pecan pie

  • Pecan oil is an edible pressed oil extracted from the pecan nut.

    Pecan oil

  • Butter pecan is a flavor, prominent especially in the southern United States, in ice cream, cakes, and cookies.

    Butter pecan

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.