tuckahoe

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See also: Tuckahoe

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Powhatan tockawhoughe. The "person" sense implies that such a person was so poor as to be reduced to eating the root.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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tuckahoe (countable and uncountable, plural tuckahoes)

  1. Any edible root of a plant of species Peltandra virginica, used by Native Americans of colonial-era Virginia.
    • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 142:
      In June, July, and August, they feed upon the rootes of Tockwough berries, fish, and greene wheat.
    • 1996, Karen Mueller Coombs, Sarah on Her Own:
      The ponderous beast had spent the summer eating tuckahoe roots, the autumn eating acorns and nuts, and was now as heavy as two stout men.
    Synonyms: wild potato, arrow arum
  2. (uncommon, US, Virginia dialect, largely obsolete) A person, especially if poor and malnourished (or if implied to be), living east of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
    Coordinate term: Cohee
    • 1828 February 8, "Tusgarora" (pen name), in a letter to the editor of The American Farmer, page 372:
      [] at least until you either get poor Tuckahoe out of his present hobble, in furnishing so many strong suspicions against the sincerity of his former professions of patriotism, []
    • 1963, Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, The Old South: the founding of American civilization, page 213:
      The poor Tuckahoe, however, when he purchased land in Washington County, or the Shenandoah, or in Rowan, seems to have left behind him, not only his worn-out fields and his tumbledown house, but his wasteful methods.
  3. The sclerotium of wood-decay fungi of species Wolfiporia extensa, used by Native Americans and the Chinese as food and as a herbal medicine.
  4. The flowering plant Orontium aquaticum.

Translations

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