Word.ws English Dictionary

tuckahoe

UK/ˈtʌkəhəʊ/

tuckahoe noun: the edible root of a plant of species Peltandra virginica, used by Native Americans of colonial-era Virginia.

Noun (1)

tuckahoe (countable and uncountable, plural tuckahoes)

  1. The edible root of a plant of species Peltandra virginica, used by Native Americans of colonial-era Virginia.
    • In June, July, and August, they feed upon the rootes of Tockwough berries, fish, and greene wheat.1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 142
    • The ponderous beast had spent the summer eating tuckahoe roots, the autumn eating acorns and nuts, and was now as heavy as two stout men.1996, Karen Mueller Coombs, Sarah on Her Own
  2. (US, Virginia, dialectal, obsolete, uncommon) A person, especially if poor and malnourished (or if implied to be), living east of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
    • […] at least until you either get poor Tuckahoe out of his present hobble, in furnishing so many strong suspicions against the sincerity of his former professions of patriotism, […]1828 February 8, "Tusgarora" (pen name), in a letter to the editor of The American Farmer, page 372
    • The poor Tuckahoe, however, when he purchased land in Washington County, or the Shenandoah, or in Rowan, seems to have left behind him, not only his worn-out fields and his tumbledown house, but his wasteful methods.1963, Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, The Old South: the founding of American civilization, page 213
  3. The sclerotium of wood-decay fungi of species Wolfiporia extensa, used by Native Americans and the Chinese as food and as a herbal medicine.
  4. The flowering plant Orontium aquaticum.

Noun (2) capitalized: Tuckahoe

Tuckahoe (plural Tuckahoes)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of tuckahoe (“person living east of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains”).

Synonyms of tuckahoe

Forms of tuckahoe

pluraltuckahoes
alternative formtockwough
pluralTuckahoes

Origin of tuckahoe

From Powhatan tockawhoughe. The "person" sense implies that such a person was so poor as to be reduced to eating the root.

Words formed from tuckahoe

  • Tuckahoe Group

Questions about tuckahoe

What does tuckahoe mean?
Tuckahoe means the edible root of a plant of species Peltandra virginica, used by Native Americans of colonial-era Virginia.
What part of speech is tuckahoe?
Tuckahoe is a noun.
How do you pronounce tuckahoe?
Tuckahoe is pronounced /ˈtʌkəhəʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of tuckahoe?
The plural of tuckahoe is tuckahoes.

Words near tuckahoe in the dictionary

  1. tuck-ins
  2. tuck-out
  3. tuck-outs
  4. tucka
  5. tuckable
  6. tuckahoe
  7. tuckahoes
  8. tuckamore
  9. tuckamores
  10. tuckas
  11. tuckavee

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tuckahoe (page history and authors); Tuckahoe (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: “tuckahoe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tuckahoe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.