Word.ws English Dictionary

pokeweed

US/ˈpoʊkˌwid/

pokeweed noun: a poisonous North American plant, Phytolacca americana, with reddish stems, broad leaves, clusters of white flowers, and dark purple berries.

pokeweed: a poisonous North American plant, Phytolacca americana, with reddish stems, broad leaves, clusters...
Image: Huw Williams ( Huwmanbeing ), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

pokeweed (countable and uncountable, plural pokeweeds)

  1. A poisonous North American plant, Phytolacca americana, with reddish stems, broad leaves, clusters of white flowers, and dark purple berries.
    • Native Americans introduced whites and slaves to several edible greens including marigold, milkweed, and pokeweed (Whit 2007). Slaves boiled pokeweed and often mixed it with turnip greens because it was thought that the two vegetables enhanced each other's flavor.2009, Herbert C. Covey, Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, ABC-CLIO, →ISBN, page 87
    Synonyms:
    poke, pokeberry, pokeroot, poke salad, American pokeweed, Virginian poke, pocan, American nightshade, cancer root, garget

pokeweed meaning in Tamil and Vietnamese

pokeweed in Tamil

நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், தாவரங்களில் ஒன்றாகும்

pokeweed in Vietnamese

Phytolacca americana
thương lục Mỹ

Synonyms of pokeweed

5 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of pokeweed

Forms of pokeweed

pluralpokeweeds

Origin of pokeweed

From poke + weed. The first element is from Powhatan pocan.

Phrases with pokeweed

Questions about pokeweed

What does pokeweed mean?
Pokeweed means a poisonous North American plant, Phytolacca americana, with reddish stems, broad leaves, clusters of white flowers, and dark purple berries.
What is pokeweed in Tamil?
Pokeweed in Tamil is நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், தாவரங்களில் ஒன்றாகும். See Pokeweed meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is pokeweed?
Pokeweed is a noun.
How do you pronounce pokeweed?
Pokeweed is pronounced /ˈpoʊkˌwid/ (US).
What is the plural of pokeweed?
The plural of pokeweed is pokeweeds.

Words near pokeweed in the dictionary

  1. pokes one's nose into
  2. pokes out
  3. pokes someone's eye out
  4. pokes the bear
  5. Pokesdown
  6. pokeweed
  7. pokeweeds
  8. pokey
  9. pokeyman
  10. pokeymans
  11. pokeymen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pokeweed (page history and authors); pokeweed (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Cite this entry: “pokeweed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pokeweed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.