maguey

See also: magüey

English

Maguey agave plant with blossoms

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish maguey, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Taíno *mawei.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /məˈɡeɪ/

Noun

maguey (plural magueys)

1. Any of various large agaves of Mexico and the southern US, especially the American aloe, Agave americana.
   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 424:

     through black fields, where tlachiqueros brought sheepskins slung across their backs full of fresh maguey juice to be fermented, and campesinos in white lined the right-of-way

   • 1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Vintage 1992, p. 147:

     and they rode through strange forests of maguey--the aloe or century plant--with immense flowering stalks that rose forty feet into the desert air.

   Synonyms: agave, pita

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:maguey.

Translations

North American agave

• Cebuano: magay
• Classical Nahuatl: metl
• Mezquital Otomi: uada
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Quechua: qara
• Spanish: maguey (es) m, pita (es) f

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Spanish

Alternative forms

• magüey

Etymology

Borrowed from Taíno *mawei.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /maˈɡei/ [maˈɣ̞ei̯]

Noun

maguey m (plural magueyes)

1. (Latin America) maguey

   Synonym: pita

Further reading

• “maguey”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014