gourd family

American  

noun

1. the plant family Cucurbitaceae, characterized by tendril-bearing vines, either trailing or climbing and having alternate, palmately lobed leaves, often large yellow or greenish flowers, and many-seeded, fleshy fruit with a hard rind, and including the cucumber, gourd, melon, pumpkin, and squash.

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Example Sentences

Monk fruit is a perennial vine native to China and a member of the gourd family.

From Science Daily • Jan. 14, 2026

Plants in the gourd family, including pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, and zucchini, are known for accumulating high levels of pollutants in their fruit.

From Science Daily • Oct. 30, 2025

Pumpkins, squash, zucchini, and other members of the gourd family have a surprising trait: they can take up pollutants from the soil and store them in their edible parts.

From Science Daily • Oct. 30, 2025

In comparison, the period is just four to five days in cucumber fruits, which are also part of the gourd family but don’t grow so large, she says.

From Scientific American • Oct. 28, 2022

Amid the wayside rubbish grows one of the gourd family, Ecbalium elaterium, commonly called the squirting cucumber, whose fruit—a rough and extremely bitter little cucumber—is the size of a date. 

From The Life of the Spider by Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander