Word.ws English Dictionary

ground provisions

ground provisions noun: starchy staple vegetables grown in the ground such as yam, taro, cassava and sweet potato.

ground provisions: starchy staple vegetables grown in the ground such as yam, taro, cassava and sweet potato
Image: Grueslayer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

ground provisions pl (plural only)

  1. (Caribbean, Guyana, Jamaica, plural, plural-only) Starchy staple vegetables grown in the ground such as yam, taro, cassava and sweet potato.
    • In Barbadoes, I doubt whether the corn, (it is Indian corn not wheat) and the ground provisions (I mean yams, and other roots) raised in the island, are sufficient to maintain the inhabitants for three months […]1775, Richard Glover, The Substance of the Evidence on the Petition Presented by the West-India Planters and Merchants, London, page 40
    • There is little cane grown in St. Mary: most of the cultivation is in fruit and ground provisions.1890, Edgar Mayhew Bacon, Eugene Murray Aaron, The New Jamaica, New York: Walbridge, page 174
    Synonyms:
    ground food

Examples of ground provisions in a sentence

  • Thirty Arawak Indians were brought to teach the English how to plant cassava, yams, and other ground provisions […]1912, James Rodway, chapter 2, in Guiana: British, Dutch, and French, London: T. Fisher Unwin, page 59:
  • Lydia has made stewed chicken, rice, string beans, and the ground provisions that Mr.2009, Elizabeth Nunez, chapter 7, in Anna In-Between, New York: Akashic Books, pages 82–83:

Synonyms of ground provisions

Questions about ground provisions

What does ground provisions mean?
Ground provisions means starchy staple vegetables grown in the ground such as yam, taro, cassava and sweet potato.
How do you use ground provisions in a sentence?
Thirty Arawak Indians were brought to teach the English how to plant cassava, yams, and other ground provisions […]
What part of speech is ground provisions?
Ground provisions is a noun.

Words near ground provisions in the dictionary

  1. ground plum
  2. ground plums
  3. ground pounder
  4. ground pounders
  5. ground power
  6. ground provisions
  7. ground proximity warning system
  8. ground proximity warning systems
  9. ground rent
  10. ground rents
  11. ground roller

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ground provisions (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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