Adjacent Words

Quassia definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

QUAS'SIA, n. A plant, or rather a genus of plants of three species, the amara, simaruba, and excelsa or polygama, natives of South America and of some of the isles of the West Indies, and possessing valuable medicinal qualities.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a bitter compound used as an insecticide and tonic and vermifuge; extracted from the wood and bark of trees of the genera Quassia and Picrasma
2: 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]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: New Latin, genus name of a South American tree, from Quassi 18th century Surinam slave who discovered the medicinal value of quassia Date: 1770 a drug from the heartwood and bark of various tropical trees of the ailanthus family used especially as a bitter tonic and remedy for roundworms in children and as an insecticide

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 an evergreen tree, Quassia amara, native to S. America. 2 the wood, bark, or root of this tree, yielding a bitter medicinal tonic and insecticide. Etymology: G. Quassi, 18th-c. Surinam slave, who discovered its medicinal properties

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.