What is "calabash"

Calabash \Cal"a*bash\ (k[a^]l"[.a]*b[a^]sh), n. [Sp. calabaza, or Pg. calaba[,c]a, caba[,c]a (cf. F. Calebasse), lit., a dry gourd, fr. Ar. qar', fem., a kind of gourd + aibas dry.]

1. The common gourd (plant or fruit).

2. The fruit of the calabash tree.

3. A water dipper, bottle, bascket, or other utensil, made from the dry shell of a calabash or gourd.

   Calabash tree. (Bot.), a tree of tropical America ( Crescentia cujete), producing a large gourdlike fruit, containing a purgative pulp. Its hard shell, after the removal of the pulp, is used for cups, bottles, etc. The African calabash tree is the baobab.

1590s, "dried, hollowed gourd used as a drinking cup," from Spanish calabaza, possibly from Arabic qar'a yabisa "dry gourd," from Persian kharabuz, used of various large melons; or from a pre-Roman Iberian *calapaccia.

n. 1 A vine grown for its fruit, which can be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried(,) and used as a container, like a gourd. In particular, (taxlink Lagenaria siceraria species noshow=1). 2 # (context originally English) The fruit of such a vine. 3 A tree grown for its fruit, which can be harvested mature and dried(,) and used as a container. In particular, (taxlink Crescentia cujete species noshow=1). 4 #The fruit of such a tree. 5 A utensil traditionally made of the dried shell of a calabash and used as a bottle, dipper, utensil or pipe, etc.

1. n. round gourd of the calabash tree

2. tropical American evergreen that produces large round gourds [syn: calabash tree, Crescentia cujete]

3. Old World climbing plant with hard-shelled bottle-shaped gourds as fruits [syn: bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria]

4. bottle made from the dried shell of a bottle gourd [syn: gourd]

5. a pipe for smoking; has a curved stem and a large bowl made from a calabash gourd [syn: calabash pipe]

The calabash, bottle gourd, or white-flowered gourd, Lagenaria siceraria (synonym Lagenaria vulgaris Ser.), also known as opo squash (from Tagalog: upo) or long melon, is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. The fresh fruit has a light-green smooth skin and a white flesh. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds. They grow in a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle shaped, or slim and serpentine, more than a metre long. Because bottle gourds are also called "calabashes", they are sometimes confused with the hard, hollow fruits of the unrelated calabash tree, Crescentia cujete, whose fruits are also used to make utensils, containers, and musical instruments. The gourd was one of the first cultivated plants in the world, grown not primarily for food, but for use as water containers. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Africa to Asia, Europe, and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd. It has been proven to be in the New World prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

Calabash may refer to:

In African music, the calabash is a percussion instrument of the family of idiophones consisting of a dried half of a large calabash, which is struck with the palms, fingers, wrist or objects to produce a variety of percussive sounds. This instrument is used in traditional dances.