coconuts

Noun

coconut (countable and uncountable, plural coconuts)

1. A fruit of the coconut palm (not a true nut), Cocos nucifera, having a fibrous husk surrounding a large seed.
   • The Coco-nut Trees grow by the Sea, on the Weſtern ſide in great Groves, 3 or 4 Miles in length, and a Mile or two broad. This tree is in ſhape like the Cabbage-tree, and at a diſtance they are not to be known each from other, only the Coco-nut Tree is fuller of Branches ; but the Cabbage-tree...1699, William Dampier, chapter X, in A New Voyage Round the World. […], 4th corrected edition, volume I, London: Printed for James Knapton, […], →OCLC, page 291
2. A hard-shelled seed of this fruit, having white flesh and a fluid-filled central cavity.
3. (uncountable) The edible white flesh of this fruit.
4. The coconut palm.
5. (US, derogatory, ethnic, slur) A Hispanic or other dark-skinned person considered to have overly assimilated to white culture.
   • After that I was regarded as comic. I became a ‘coconut’—someone brown on the outside, white on the inside. I was the bleached academic—more white than the anglo professors. In my classes several students glared at me, clearly seeing in me the person they feared ever becoming. Who was I, after all...1982, Richard Rodriguez, “Profession”, in Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 162
6. (Australia, Kenya, South Africa, derogatory, ethnic, slur) A black person considered to have overly assimilated to white culture, a black race traitor.
   • Their convictions challenged those critics who dismissed John Githongo’s anti-corruption efforts as the naïve projection of inappropriate ‘mzungu’ values onto an African nation where they were doomed to fail. If John was a ‘coconut’, he certainly wasn’t the only coconut in Kenya.2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower

   Synonyms:

   Oreo, Uncle Tom

See all 11 meanings of coconut