Veg·e·ta·ble a.
 1. Of or pertaining to plants; having the nature of, or produced by, plants; as, a vegetable nature; vegetable growths, juices, etc.
 Blooming ambrosial fruit
 Of vegetable gold.   --Milton.
 2. Consisting of, or comprising, plants; as, the vegetable kingdom.
 Vegetable alkali Chem., an alkaloid.
 Vegetable brimstone. Bot. See Vegetable sulphur, below.
 Vegetable butter Bot., a name of several kinds of concrete vegetable oil; as that produced by the Indian butter tree, the African shea tree, and the Pentadesma butyracea, a tree of the order Guttiferae, also African. Still another kind is pressed from the seeds of cocoa (Theobroma).
 Vegetable flannel, a textile material, manufactured in Germany from pine-needle wool, a down or fiber obtained from the leaves of the Pinus sylvestris.
 Vegetable ivory. See Ivory nut, under Ivory.
 Vegetable jelly. See Pectin.
 Vegetable kingdom. Nat. Hist. See the last Phrase, below.
 Vegetable leather. (a) Bot. A shrubby West Indian spurge (Euphorbia punicea), with leathery foliage and crimson bracts. (b) See Vegetable leather, under Leather.
 Vegetable marrow Bot., an egg-shaped gourd, commonly eight to ten inches long.  It is noted for the very tender quality of its flesh, and is a favorite culinary vegetable in England.  It has been said to be of Persian origin, but is now thought to have been derived from a form of the American pumpkin.
 Vegetable oyster Bot., the oyster plant. See under Oyster.
 Vegetable parchment, papyrine.
 Vegetable sheep Bot., a white woolly plant (Raoulia eximia) of New Zealand, which grows in the form of large fleecy cushions on the mountains.
 Vegetable silk, a cottonlike, fibrous material obtained from the coating of the seeds of a Brazilian tree (Chorisia speciosa).  It is used for various purposes, as for stuffing cushions, and the like, but is incapable of being spun on account of a want of cohesion among the fibers.
 Vegetable sponge. See 1st Loof.
 Vegetable sulphur, the fine and highly inflammable spores of the club moss (Lycopodium clavatum); witch meal.
 Vegetable tallow, a substance resembling tallow, obtained from various plants; as, Chinese vegetable tallow, obtained from the seeds of the tallow tree. Indian vegetable tallow is a name sometimes given to piney tallow.
 Vegetable wax, a waxy excretion on the leaves or fruits of certain plants, as the bayberry.
 Vegetable kingdom Nat. Hist., that primary division of living things which includes all plants. The classes of the vegetable kingdom have been grouped differently by various botanists. The following is one of the best of the many arrangements of the principal subdivisions.
 I. Phaenogamia (called also Phanerogamia). Plants having distinct flowers and true seeds. { 1. Dicotyledons (called also Exogens). -- Seeds with two or more cotyledons.  Stems with the pith, woody fiber, and bark concentrically arranged.  Divided into two subclasses: Angiosperms, having the woody fiber interspersed with dotted or annular ducts, and the seeds contained in a true ovary; Gymnosperms, having few or no ducts in the woody fiber, and the seeds naked.  2. Monocotyledons (called also Endogens). -- Seeds with single cotyledon. Stems with slender bundles of woody fiber not concentrically arranged, and with no true bark.}
 II. Cryptogamia. Plants without true flowers, and reproduced by minute spores of various kinds, or by simple cell division. { 1. Acrogens. -- Plants usually with distinct stems and leaves, existing in two alternate conditions, one of which is nonsexual and sporophoric, the other sexual and oophoric.  Divided into Vascular Acrogens, or Pteridophyta, having the sporophoric plant conspicuous and consisting partly of vascular tissue, as in Ferns, Lycopods, and Equiseta, and Cellular Acrogens, or Bryophyta, having the sexual plant most conspicuous, but destitute of vascular tissue, as in Mosses and Scale Mosses. 2. Thallogens. -- Plants without distinct stem and leaves, consisting of a simple or branched mass of cellular tissue, or reduced to a single cell.  Reproduction effected variously. Divided into Algae, which contain chlorophyll or its equivalent, and which live upon air and water, and Fungi, which contain no chlorophyll, and live on organic matter. (Lichens are now believed to be fungi parasitic on included algae.}
 Note: ☞ Many botanists divide the Phaenogamia primarily into Gymnosperms and Angiosperms, and the latter into Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons. Others consider Pteridophyta and Bryophyta to be separate classes. Thallogens are variously divided by different writers, and the places for diatoms, slime molds, and stoneworts are altogether uncertain.
    For definitions, see these names in the Vocabulary.
 I·vo·ry n.; pl. Ivories
 1. The hard, white, opaque, fine-grained substance constituting the tusks of the elephant. It is a variety of dentine, characterized by the minuteness and close arrangement of the tubes, as also by their double flexure. It is used in manufacturing articles of ornament or utility.
 Note: ☞ Ivory is the name commercially given not only to the substance constituting the tusks of the elephant, but also to that of the tusks of the hippopotamus and walrus, the hornlike tusk of the narwhal, etc.
 2. The tusks themselves of the elephant, etc.
 3. Any carving executed in ivory.
 4. pl. Teeth; as, to show one's ivories. [Slang]
 Ivory black. See under Black, n.
 Ivory gull Zool., a white Arctic gull (Larus eburneus).
 Ivory nut Bot., the nut of a species of palm, the Phytephas macroarpa, often as large as a hen's egg. When young the seed contains a fluid, which gradually hardness into a whitish, close-grained, albuminous substance, resembling the finest ivory in texture and color, whence it is called vegetable ivory. It is wrought into various articles, as buttons, chessmen, etc. The palm is found in New Grenada. A smaller kind is the fruit of the Phytephas microarpa. The nuts are known in commerce as Corosso nuts.
 Ivory palm Bot., the palm tree which produces ivory nuts.
 Ivory shell Zool., any species of Eburna, a genus of marine gastropod shells, having a smooth surface, usually white with red or brown spots.
 Vegetable ivory, the meat of the ivory nut. See Ivory nut (above).
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 vegetable ivory
      n : nutlike seed of a South American palm; the hard white shell
          takes a high polish and is used for e.g. buttons [syn: ivory
          nut, apple nut]