PRICKLY PEAR • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Prickly pear

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/prˈɪkli pɛr/ Listen

Prickly pear

noun

Cacti having spiny flat joints and oval fruit that is edible in some species; often used as food for stock. Synonym: prickly pear cactus.

Round or pear-shaped spiny fruit of any of various prickly pear cacti.

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Etymology of 'Prickly pear'

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"Prickly pear" Quotes from Famous Books

... desolate island, about a mile long, half a mile wide, and about ten miles from the place we left the day before. It was covered mostly with huge rocks, with here and there a small patch of soil, overrun with prickly pear, and inhabited by no living animal excepting lizards and small poisonous snakes. We had been now over twenty-four hours without food or water. Of the latter article, on searching around, we found a little in the hollows on the rocks, ...

— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... spine-bearing tress and cactus, not without getting a considerable number of thorns in our hands and legs. It was very dry and hot. Where the javalinas live in droves in the river bottoms they often drink at the pools; but when some distance from water they seem to live quite comfortably on the prickly pear, slaking their thirst by eating ...

— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... for himself is a veritable fortified castle built in up-to-date desert-rat style, under a protecting bush or rock, or beside a cactus—preferably a prickly pear. This stronghold, from four to five feet long and three feet high, is made of sticks interwoven with pieces of prickly cactus, thorny twigs, and odd bits in general—great care being taken to have most of the thorns project outward. His private quarters consist ...

— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

Words linked to "Prickly pear" : nopal, Opuntia, tuna, genus Opuntia, cactus, edible fruit, Opuntia tuna, Opuntia lindheimeri