upas
Americannoun
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the poisonous milky sap of a large tree, Antiaris toxicaria, of the mulberry family, native to tropical Asia, Africa, and the Philippine Islands, used for arrow poison.
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the tree itself.
noun
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a large moraceous tree of Java, Antiaria toxicaria, having whitish bark and poisonous milky sap
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the sap of this tree, used as an arrow poison
Etymology
Origin of upas
1775–85; < Javanese: poison, especially dart poison
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.
From upas to coco de mer, an arboreal odyssey.
From Nature • Jun. 5, 2018
Another was that Britain's tax, although set upas an import duty, seemed in effect an income tax�and therefore in violation of an Anglo-American agreement designed to prevent double taxation on incomes.
From Time Magazine Archive
A few other great cities have their lesser Wall streets, and where Weston & Hill, like a deadly upas tree, flourished for a time, a mimic Wall Street existed.
From Rockhaven by Munn, Charles Clark
I had been reared, so to speak, in the fatal shade of that upas.
From My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year by Train, George Francis
But next day again the venerable Lokman passed by, and he saw that the tree was a upas tree and the sleepers were dead.
From A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century by Saintsbury, George
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.
