Adjacent Words

Quassia amara definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: handsome South American shrub or small tree having bright scarlet flowers and yielding a valuable fine-grained yellowish wood; yields the bitter drug quassia from its wood and bark [syn: quassia, bitterwood, Quassia amara]

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Quassia Quas"si*a, n. [NL. From the name of a negro, Quassy, or Quash, who prescribed this article as a specific.] The wood of several tropical American trees of the order Simarube[ae], as Quassia amara, Picr[ae]na excelsa, and Simaruba amara. It is intensely bitter, and is used in medicine and sometimes as a substitute for hops in making beer.