Word.ws English Dictionary

ordeal tree

ordeal tree noun: a poisonous tree of Madagascar (Cerbera manghas (syn. Tanghinia venenifera). Those suspected of crime were forced to eat the seeds of the plumlike fruit, and criminals were put to death by being pricked with a lance dipped in the juice of the seeds.

Noun

ordeal tree (plural ordeal trees)

  1. A poisonous tree of Madagascar (Cerbera manghas (syn. Tanghinia venenifera). Those suspected of crime were forced to eat the seeds of the plumlike fruit, and criminals were put to death by being pricked with a lance dipped in the juice of the seeds.
  2. A similar tree (Erythrophleum spp.) put to similar use in Liberia; sassywood.
  3. A deciduous tree of the African savanna, 1.8-15 m tall, with a rounded crown and pendulous branchlets (Crossopteryx febrifuga).

Forms of ordeal tree

pluralordeal trees

Questions about ordeal tree

What does ordeal tree mean?
Ordeal tree means a poisonous tree of Madagascar (Cerbera manghas (syn. Tanghinia venenifera). Those suspected of crime were forced to eat the seeds of the plumlike fruit, and criminals were put to death by being pricked with a lance dipped in the juice of the seeds.
What part of speech is ordeal tree?
Ordeal tree is a noun.
What is the plural of ordeal tree?
The plural of ordeal tree is ordeal trees.

Words near ordeal tree in the dictionary

  1. ordas
  2. orde
  3. ordeal
  4. ordeal bean
  5. ordeal beans
  6. ordeal tree
  7. ordeal trees
  8. ordeals
  9. ordenance
  10. Ordensstaat
  11. order

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ordeal tree (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ordeal tree.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ordeal_tree. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.