peanut
/ˈpiːnʌt
/noun
1The oval seed of a tropical South American plant, often roasted and salted and eaten as a snack or used to make oil or animal feed: a bag of dry-roasted peanuts...
- In western countries they are most familiar as roasted or salted peanuts, or in peanut butter or incorporated in confectionery.
- Rich in essential fatty acids and protein, it also contains organic dry roasted Valencia peanuts and sea salt.
- How she loved to crunch them; dry roasted peanuts, macadamias, cashews, pistachios, walnuts and Brazils.
2The plant of the pea family that bears peanuts, which develop in pods that ripen underground.
- Arachis hypogaea, family Leguminosae.
- He encouraged farmers to try new crops, like peanuts, cowpeas and sweet potatoes, and to try new rotations, better cultural practices and more appropriate machinery.
- They grow several staple crops, including manioc root, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, peanuts, and plantains.
3 (peanuts) informal A very small or inadequate sum of money: he pays peanuts...
- Whatever the extra cost on top of the original £4.1 million budget, it would be money worth spending and peanuts compared to the potential cost to the York economy of nine more months of traffic chaos.
- These corruption charges amount to an amount of money that's peanuts compared to the corruption that went on before him.
- Harper's gas tax plan will cost peanuts and save Canadians pennies but it's something everyone can relate to with soaring gas prices.
4 (peanuts) Small pieces of styrofoam used as packing material.My things were still enclosed in hundreds of packing boxes, and I eyed the Styrofoam peanuts peeking out of them with happiness....
- Giggling with delight, he fished through the styrofoam peanuts and retrieved a length of silk, folded about three inches wide and almost two feet long, then tied with a ribbon.
- The big shopping services also create a new and significant waste stream of cardboard boxes and styrofoam packing peanuts.