cabbage bark

noun

variants or cabbage-bark tree

: an angelim (Andira inermis) widely distributed in tropical America and western Africa having a shaggy unpleasant-smelling toxic bark that has been used together with the seeds as a purgative, vermifuge, and narcotic and yielding a hard strong durable wood variable in color and susceptible of a fine polish

called also cabbage tree

Word History

Etymology

cabbage (palm) + bark

First Known Use

1777, in the meaning defined above

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