Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com

rough lemon

American  

noun

  1. a variety of lemon that has orange-yellow, rough-skinned fruit and is used as a rootstock for the cultivation of other citrus fruits.

Etymology

Origin of rough lemon

First recorded in 1895–1900

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.

Plant a lime seed and up comes a kumquat, or, with equal odds, a Seville orange, not to mention a rough lemon or a tangerine.

From The New Yorker • Sep. 14, 2015

Eventually tackling citron, he discovered that it could survive California's climate when grafted to the rough lemon.

From Time Magazine Archive

“The rough lemon is totally worthless in the supermarket, and yet there is no more valuable tree out here in the nursery.”

From "Tangerine" by Edward Bloor

“If we don’t, the Golden Dawns are dead, and we got ourselves a thousand rough lemon trees.”

From "Tangerine" by Edward Bloor

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.