Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Cucumber |
CucumberNoun1. A melon vine of the genus Cucumis; cultivated from earliest times for its cylindrical green fruit. 2. Cylindrical green fruit with thin green rind and white flesh eaten as a vegetable; related to melons. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "cucumber" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1791. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Dream Interpretation | This is a dream of plenty, denoting health and prosperity. For the sick to dream of serving cucumbers, denotes their speedy recovery. For the married, a pleasant change. Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted .... |
Food & Agriculture | Flavour produced when an oil is hermetically packed for too long, particularly in tin containers, and which is attributed to the formation of 2, 6 nonadienal. Source: European Union. (references) |
| Cool and moist due to their high water content. "Cukes" belong to the same family as pumpkins, zucchini, watermelon and other squashes. Source: European Union. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Garden cucumber Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Violales Family: Cucurbitaceae Genus: Cucumis Species: sativus Binomial nomenclature Cucumis sativus Ref: ITIS 22364 The cucumber is the edible fruit of the cucumber plant Cucumis sativus, which belongs to the gourd family Cucurbitaceae, as do melons and squash. The plant has been cultivated for 3000 years and is widely cultivated today. The cucumber plant has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruit. The vine is grown on the ground or on trellises, often in greenhouses.
The fruit, which is a vegetable in the culinary sense, is commonly harvested while still green and is eaten raw or cooked or is made into pickles. Cucumbers have only small amounts of nutrients. Pickles are more nutritious than fresh cucumbers because of the ingredients, especially dill, added during pickling.
Cucumbers are usually green-skinned, roughly cylindrical, elongated, with tapered ends, and may be as large as 30 cm long and 5 cm in diameter. Cucumbers grown to be eaten fresh (called slicers) and those intended for pickling (called picklers) are similar. Slicers grown commercially for the U.S. market are generally longer, smoother, more uniform in color, and have a tougher skin. Slicers in other countries are smaller and have a thinner, more delicate skin. Picklers are generally shorter and thicker.
A few varieties of cucumber are parthenocarpic, the blossoms creating seedless fruit without pollination. Pollination for these varieties degrades the quality. In the US, these are usually grown in greenhouses, where bees are excluded. In Europe, they are grown outdoors in some regions, and bees are excluded from these areas. Most cuke varieties however, are seeded and require pollination. Thousands of hives of bees are annually carried to cucumber fields just before bloom for the purpose. Symptoms of inadequate pollination include fruit abortion and misshapen fruit.
Traditional varieties produce male blossoms first, then female, in about equivalent numbers. New gynoecious hybrid cultivars produce almost all female blossoms. However, since these varieties do not provide pollen, they must have interplanted a pollenizer variety and the number of beehives per acre is increased. Insecticide applications for insect pests must be done very carefully to avoid killing off the insect pollinators.
External links:
- Plant profile at the Plants Database (http://plants.usda.gov/) - shows classification and distribution by US state.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Cucumber."
Synonyms: CucumberSynonyms: cucumber vine (n), cuke (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Cold | Cold as a stone, cold as marble, cold as lead, cold as iron, cold as a frog, cold as charity, cold as Christmas; cool as a cucumber, cool as custard. |
Excitability | Easy-going, peaceful, placid, calm; quiet as a mouse; tranquil, serene; cool as a cucumber, cool as a custard; undemonstrative. |
Indifference | Adjective: indifferent, cold, frigid, lukewarm; cool, cool as a cucumber; unconcerned, insouciant, phlegmatic, pococurante, easygoing, devil-may-care, careless, listless, lackadaisical; half-hearted; unambitious, unaspiring, undesirous, unsolicitous, unattracted. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Cucumber |
| English words defined with "cucumber": brown root rot fungus ♦ Colocynth, Cucumber tree, Cucumiform, Cucurbitaceae ♦ Earth apple, Ecballium, Elaterium ♦ family Cucurbitaceae ♦ genus Ecballium, gherkin, gourd family, green mayonnaise ♦ Magnolia acuminata ♦ sauce verte, Snake gourd, Squash beetle, Star cucumber ♦ Thielavia basicola. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "cucumber": chayote, chocho, christophine, Cucumber Time, Cucumovirus ♦ Holothurin ♦ MELOTHRIA GUADALUPENSIS. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | I was a stand-up tomato: a juicy, sexy, beefsteak tomato! Nobody does vegetables like me! I did an evening of vegetables off-Broadway! I did the best tomato, the best cucumber I did an endive salad that knocked the critics on their ass (Tootsie; writing credit: Larry Gelbart; Don McGuire) Okay, a mollusk walks up to this sea cucumber, well he doesn't actually walk, he's just there, and he turns to the sea cucumber, and Well, wait, there's a mollusk and a sea cucumber and (Finding Nemo; writing credit: Andrew Stanton) And some Boston cucumber on the top (Zingo; writing credit: Matthew Allen; Santiago Gil) I am making a quality cucumber shake here (Even Stevens; writing credit: Sarah Jane Cunningham) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Cucumber (1972) The Sign of the Cucumber (1917) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Sea cucumber being prepared for salad. Just kidding! The knife is for scale. Credit: National Undersea Research Program (NURP). |  | Sea Cucumber, Euapta godeffroyi, very common in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. Credit: The Coral Kingdom. |
 | Holothuroidean( Sea cucumber) , Holothuria atra, whole organism. Credit: The Coral Kingdom. |  | Small crabs taken from digestive system of sea cucumber. Credit: The Coral Kingdom. |
 | Cucumber beetle. P. Credit: USDA ARS News; photo by Scott Bauer.. |  | Wild Cucumber, also called the Coast Manroot, (Marah oreganus) found at Shady Cove near the Rogue River. Credit: Terry Tuttle. |
 | Miscellaneous subjects. Cucumber on ground. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
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| "Summer in berlin" by Sandro Petri Commentary: "Cucumber and dolls." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Guatemala | The largest seed importer is the vegetable sector, which includes sweet corn, beets, cauliflower, onion, pepper, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, radish, cucumber, lettuce, squash, tomato, and others. (references) |
Trade | Germany | In addition to considerable tariffs which vary by product, imports of selected produce (tomatoes, cucumber, artichokes, courgettes, citrus, table grapes, apples, pears, apricots, cherries, peaches, nectarines and plums) are subject to an entry price system. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Cucumber" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 99.50% of the time. "Cucumber" is used about 201 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 99.5% | 200 | 21,580 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.5% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 201 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "cucumber": as cool as a cucumber ♦ as cool as cucumber ♦ Bitter cucumber ♦ cool as a cucumber ♦ Cucumber beetle ♦ Cucumber Mosaic Virus Satellite ♦ cucumber tree ♦ cucumber vine ♦ exploding cucumber ♦ Indian cucumber ♦ Jamaica cucumber ♦ Jerusalem cucumber ♦ pickled cucumber ♦ sea cucumber ♦ serpent cucumber ♦ snake cucumber ♦ squirting cucumber ♦ star cucumber. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "cucumber": cucumber-like. | |
Ending with "cucumber": sea-cucumber, sponge-cucumber. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
cucumber | 770 | cucumber grow | 29 |
cucumber salad | 251 | cucumber sauce | 28 |
sea cucumber | 185 | cucumber picture | 26 |
the cucumber sandwich | 155 | cucumber onion salad | 25 |
cucumber recipe | 152 | pickled cucumber | 24 |
cucumber growing | 102 | canning cucumber | 22 |
cucumber seed | 97 | cucumber insertion | 22 |
cucumber salad recipe | 86 | cucumber pickle recipe | 20 |
agriculture cucumber | 76 | cucumber planting | 20 |
cucumber sex | 70 | cucumber pussy | 20 |
cucumber salad tomato | 54 | disease cucumber | 19 |
cucumber beetle | 51 | cucumber dip | 18 |
cucumber recipe sandwich | 43 | cucumber melon | 18 |
company cucumber list | 40 | cucumber importer | 18 |
cucumber soup | 40 | cucumber in pussy | 17 |
cucumber pickle | 40 | cucumber onion | 17 |
cucumber plant | 37 | cucumber picture sea | 16 |
cucumber dildo | 32 | cold cucumber soup | 15 |
cucumber pickling | 31 | cucumber recipe salad tomato | 15 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "cucumber"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | trangull (cuke), kastravec. (various references) | |
Arabic | قثاء, خيار (choice, liberty, option, preference), رابط الجأش (collected, composed, cool, imperturbable, nonchalant, philosophical, phlegmatical, possessed, self possessed). (various references) | |
Asturian | pepinu. (various references) | |
Bavarian | gugumera. (various references) | |
Bemba | icibimbi. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | краставица. (various references) | |
Catalan | cogombre. (various references) | |
Cebuano | pipino. (various references) | |
Chamorro | pipinu. (various references) | |
Chinese | 黃瓜 , 黄瓜 (Cucumbers). (various references) | |
Czech | okurka, okurek. (various references) | |
Danish | agurk. (various references) | |
Dutch | komkommer. (various references) | |
Esperanto | kukumo. (various references) | |
Faeroese | agurka. (various references) | |
Farsi | هربوته یامیوه خیاری شکل , خیار (Option). (various references) | |
Finnish | kurkku (throat). (various references) | |
French | concombre. (various references) | |
Frisian | komkommer. (various references) | |
German | Gurke (conk, gherkin, hooter). (various references) | |
Greek | αγγούρι. (various references) | |
Hebrew | מלפפון. (various references) | |
Hungarian | uborka. (various references) | |
Indonesian | mentimun. (various references) | |
Italian | cetriolo (gherkin). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 胡瓜 , 黄瓜 , かさかさ鳴る (burning hotly, clattering, clink, exactly, flare up, flying into a rage, frozen solid, I wonder, knocking, obstinate, scared stiff, set rock hard, tick-tock, tightly, to crinkle, to grow numb with cold, to make a rustling sound, to rustle, with a click). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | きゅうり (birthplace, historic village, home town, native place, old village, one's old home, study of natural laws), かっぱ . (various references) | |
Korean | 오이 (Cucumbers). (various references) | |
Macedonian | krastavica. (various references) | |
Malay | mentimun. (various references) | |
Manx | slattag ghlass, cucowr. (various references) | |
Maya | kat-iik (cucumber pepper). (various references) | |
Mohawk | kanon'onhserakeras. (various references) | |
Norwegian | slangeagurk, agurk. (various references) | |
Papiamen | kònkòmber. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ucumbercay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | pepino (cuke). (various references) | |
Provencal | congombre. (various references) | |
Romanian | castravete. (various references) | |
Romansch | susumera. (various references) | |
Russian | огурец. (various references) | |
Samoan | kukama. (various references) | |
Scottish | cularan (a cucumber). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | krastavac. (various references) | |
Shona | gaka. (various references) | |
Spanish | pepino (cuke, gherkin). (various references) | |
Sranan | komkomro. (various references) | |
Swedish | gurka (gherkin, gherkinr). (various references) | |
Turkish | salatalik, salatalık (gherkin), hiyar, hıyar. (various references) | |
Turkmen | hyяar. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | огірок (cuke). (various references) | |
Zulu | ikhukhamba. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Sumerian | 3100 BCE-2500 BCE | uku. (various references) |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | cucumeres, cucumis, Cucumis sativus, Magnolia acuminata, Magnolia glauca L., Magnolia virginiana L.. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "cucumber": cucumbers. (additional references) | |
| |
"Cucumber" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Casambre, cocumber, concombre, cubumber, cuecumber. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "cucumber" (pronounced kyuw"kumber) |
| 3 | -m b er | Ember, encumber, amber, bedchamber, camber, chamber, clamber, Cumber, dismember, limber, lumber, member, misremember, nonmember, number, outnumber, remember, slumber, somber, timber, timbre. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "b-c-c-e-m-r-u-u" | |
-2 letters: cumber. | |
-3 letters: brume, cecum, crumb, cuber, umber. | |
-4 letters: berm, cube, curb, cure, ecru, mure, rube. | |
-5 letters: bum, bur, cub, cue, cum, cur, ecu, emu, reb, rec, rem, rub, rue, rum, urb. | |
| Words containing the letters "b-c-c-e-m-r-u-u" | |
+1 letter: cucumbers. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Images: Digital Art | 9. Quotations: Non-fiction 10. Usage Frequency 11. Expressions 12. Expressions: Internet | 13. Translations: Modern 14. Translations: Ancient 15. Derivations 16. Rhymes | 17. Anagrams 18. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
