banana
Americannoun
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bananas
plural
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a tropical plant of the genus Musa, certain species of which are cultivated for their nutritious fruit.
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the fruit, especially that of M. paradisiaca, with yellow or reddish rind.
noun
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any of several tropical and subtropical herbaceous treelike plants of the musaceous genus Musa , esp M. sapientum , a widely cultivated species propagated from suckers and having hanging clusters of edible fruit
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the crescent-shaped fruit of any of these plants Compare plantain 2
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of banana
1590–1600; < Spanish < Portuguese (perhaps via Sp); akin to various words for banana or plantain in WAfr languages (e.g., Wolof, Malinke banana, Vai (Mande language of Liberia) bana ), but ultimate source and direction of borrowing uncertain
Explanation
A banana is a curved, yellow fruit with a thick skin and soft sweet flesh. If you eat a banana every day for breakfast, your roommate might nickname you "the monkey." A banana is a tropical fruit that's quite popular all over the world. It grows in bunches on a banana tree. To "go bananas" is a slangy way of saying "go crazy" or act ridiculous, and if someone refers to the "top banana," they mean the most important person in a particular group. The origin of banana isn't certain, but it's thought that it was borrowed by the Spanish or Portuguese from an African word, probably the Wolof word banana.
Vocabulary lists containing banana
Yellow
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Spelling Practice 2, Unit 7
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A while back, for instance, Friday Ashlie decided Monday Ashlie would make banana leaf-wrapped fish.
From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2026
Now United must prepare for their Champions League return, against another banana skin-type opponent in Azerbaijan's Sabah FK.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026
For farmers, dry soils have disrupted the growth of fruit and cacao trees as well as banana and coffee plants, contributing to crop losses.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 4, 2026
Right now it’s banana ice cream with blueberries and it’s heaven.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
Dish after dish is brought to the table, some easily identifiable as quail or rabbit or lamb, served on banana leaves or baked in apples or garnished with brandy-soaked cherries.
From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
"Before the ube craze, it was a niche market," he said, adding it had lagged behind high-value crops like bananas, mangoes and coffee.
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
And then one day, when I had a bunch of almost-rotten bananas sitting on my kitchen counter, I threw them together and made a cake.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026
Among them was Lielie, the name she uses publicly, who moved with her family to Texas from South Africa, where they had lived on her stepfather's farm, growing macadamia nuts and bananas.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
Caretakers later had to trade bananas and yogurt to persuade the chimpanzees to return the crystal.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026
Afterward he had climbed down, gone over to my tent, and taken the bananas that had just been put there for my supper.
From "My Life with the Chimpanzees" by Jane Goodall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
