What is "acorn"

Oak \Oak\ ([=o]k), n. [OE. oke, ok, ak, AS. [=a]c; akin to D. eik, G. eiche, OHG. eih, Icel. eik, Sw. ek, Dan. eeg.]

1. (Bot.) Any tree or shrub of the genus Quercus. The oaks have alternate leaves, often variously lobed, and staminate flowers in catkins. The fruit is a smooth nut, called an acorn, which is more or less inclosed in a scaly involucre called the cup or cupule. There are now recognized about three hundred species, of which nearly fifty occur in the United States, the rest in Europe, Asia, and the other parts of North America, a very few barely reaching the northern parts of South America and Africa. Many of the oaks form forest trees of grand proportions and live many centuries. The wood is usually hard and tough, and provided with conspicuous medullary rays, forming the silver grain.

2. The strong wood or timber of the oak.

   Note: Among the true oaks in America are:

   Barren oak, or

   Black-jack, Quercus nigra.

   Basket oak, Quercus Michauxii.

   Black oak, Quercus tinctoria; -- called also yellow oak or quercitron oak.

   Bur oak (see under Bur.), Quercus macrocarpa; -- called also over-cup or mossy-cup oak.

   Chestnut oak, Quercus Prinus and Quercus densiflora.

   Chinquapin oak (see under Chinquapin), Quercus prinoides.

   Coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia, of California; -- also called enceno.

   Live oak (see under Live), Quercus virens, the best of all for shipbuilding; also, Quercus Chrysolepis, of California.

   Pin oak. Same as Swamp oak.

   Post oak, Quercus obtusifolia.

   Red oak, Quercus rubra.

   Scarlet oak, Quercus coccinea.

   Scrub oak, Quercus ilicifolia, Quercus undulata, etc.

   Shingle oak, Quercus imbricaria.

   Spanish oak, Quercus falcata.

   Swamp Spanish oak, or

   Pin oak, Quercus palustris.

   Swamp white oak, Quercus bicolor.

   Water oak, Quercus aquatica.

   Water white oak, Quercus lyrata.

   Willow oak, Quercus Phellos. [1913 Webster] Among the true oaks in Europe are:

   Bitter oak, or

   Turkey oak, Quercus Cerris (see Cerris).

   Cork oak, Quercus Suber.

   English white oak, Quercus Robur.

   Evergreen oak,

   Holly oak, or

   Holm oak, Quercus Ilex.

   Kermes oak, Quercus coccifera.

   Nutgall oak, Quercus infectoria.

   Note: Among plants called oak, but not of the genus Quercus, are:

   African oak, a valuable timber tree ( Oldfieldia Africana).

   Australian oak or She oak, any tree of the genus Casuarina (see Casuarina).

   Indian oak, the teak tree (see Teak).

   Jerusalem oak. See under Jerusalem.

   New Zealand oak, a sapindaceous tree ( Alectryon excelsum).

   Poison oak, a shrub once not distinguished from poison ivy, but now restricted to Rhus toxicodendron or Rhus diversiloba.

   Silky oak or Silk-bark oak, an Australian tree ( Grevillea robusta).

   Green oak, oak wood colored green by the growth of the mycelium of certain fungi.

   Oak apple, a large, smooth, round gall produced on the leaves of the American red oak by a gallfly ( Cynips confluens). It is green and pulpy when young.

   Oak beauty (Zo["o]l.), a British geometrid moth ( Biston prodromaria) whose larva feeds on the oak.

   Oak gall, a gall found on the oak. See 2d Gall.

   Oak leather (Bot.), the mycelium of a fungus which forms leatherlike patches in the fissures of oak wood.

   Oak pruner. (Zo["o]l.) See Pruner, the insect.

   Oak spangle, a kind of gall produced on the oak by the insect Diplolepis lenticularis.

   Oak wart, a wartlike gall on the twigs of an oak.

   The Oaks, one of the three great annual English horse races (the Derby and St. Leger being the others). It was instituted in 1779 by the Earl of Derby, and so called from his estate.

   To sport one's oak, to be ``not at home to visitors,'' signified by closing the outer (oaken) door of one's rooms. [Cant, Eng. Univ.]

Old English æcern "nut," common Germanic (cognates: Old Norse akarn, Dutch aker, Low German ecker "acorn," German Ecker, Gothic akran "fruit"), originally the mast of any forest tree, and ultimately related (via notion of "fruit of the open or unenclosed land") to Old English æcer "open land," Gothic akrs "field," Old French aigrun "fruits and vegetables" (from Frankish or some other Germanic source); see acre.\n

\nThe sense gradually restricted in Low German, Scandinavian, and English to the most important of the forest produce for feeding swine, the mast of the oak tree. Spelling changed 15c.-16c. by folk etymology association with oak (Old English ac) and corn (n.1).

n. 1 The fruit of the oak, being an oval nut growing in a woody cup or cupule. 2 (context nautical English) A cone-shaped piece of wood on the point of the spindle above the vane, on the mast-head. 3 (context zoology English) See ''acorn-shell''. 4 (context slang usually in plural English) A testicle.

n. fruit of the oak tree: a smooth thin-walled nut in a woody cup-shaped base

An acorn is the nut of an oak tree.

Acorn or The Acorn may also refer to:

The acorn, or oak nut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera Quercus and Lithocarpus, in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains a single seed (occasionally two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne in a cup-shaped cupule. Acorns are 1–6 cm long and 0.8–4 cm broad. Acorns take between 6 and 24 months (depending on the species) to mature; see List of Quercus species for details of oak classification, in which acorn morphology and phenology are important factors.

Acorn, developed by CACI Limited in London, is a segmentation tool which categorises the United Kingdom’s population into demographic types. It has been built by analysing significant social factors and population behaviour to provide precise information and in-depth understanding of the different types of people and communities across the UK. Acorn segments households, postcodes and neighbourhoods into 6 categories, 18 groups and 62 types.