coconut
Pluralcoconuts
- 1The hard-shelled seed of the coconut palm's fruit, with firm white flesh lining the shell and a central cavity filled with watery liquid.
He drained the coconut through a hole in the shell, then split it open to scrape out the flesh.
Bakers crack open dozens of coconuts a week for the fresh flesh inside.
- 2The fruit of the coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, with a fibrous husk surrounding a single large seed; despite the name, not a true nut.
Whole coconuts, husk and all, can float across the ocean for weeks before washing ashore.
A freshly harvested coconut still wears its smooth green husk.
Note
The name is simply coco plus nut, which is why it keeps the word nut although botanically it is not one. Older writing splits the compound: William Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World (1699) describes Coco-nut Trees standing in great groves by the sea. Counted, it is the whole fruit (three coconuts); used as a mass noun, it drifts toward the edible white flesh.
- 3The edible white flesh of the coconut fruit.
She toasted the shredded coconut before folding it into the batter.
Fresh coconut tastes richer than the dried, sweetened kind sold in bags.
- 4The tall tropical palm, Cocos nucifera, that bears coconuts, common along coastlines throughout the tropics.
Rows of coconuts line the road into the village, their fronds rattling in the wind.
The old coconut behind the house finally toppled in the hurricane.
- 5A person's head, in jocular slang, especially in talk of bumps and blows or appeals to think.
The foul ball nearly clipped the umpire on the coconut.
He's got nothing in that coconut but baseball stats and song lyrics.
Similarnut
Note
Like nut, it turns the head into a hard-shelled fruit, and it borrows that word's idioms. To go off your coconut is to go off your nut: in Dennis Glover's The Last Man in Europe (2021), a man in love is going off his coconut. The tone stays comic even with violence. In Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness (2007), Ash sends a blast straight through the coconut.
- 6
- 7A Hispanic or other dark-skinned person regarded as having overly assimilated to white culture; a derogatory label.
Activists accused the Latino councilman of being a coconut who had sold out his own neighborhood.
She grew up being called a coconut at school and a gringa by her grandmother.
Note
The insult reads the fruit as a portrait: brown on the outside, white on the inside. In US usage it accuses a Hispanic or other dark-skinned person of trading their own community's ways for white ones. Richard Rodriguez turns it on himself in Hunger of Memory (1982), recalling how he became the bleached academic, more white than the Anglo professors. Quote or discuss it; do not use it of anyone.
- 8An ethnic slur for a Black person regarded as having assimilated too far into white culture and so as having betrayed their own race.
SimilarOreo
Note
In South Africa, Australia and Kenya, the brown-and-white image behind the US slur is turned on Black people. Its nearest English equivalents are Oreo and Uncle Tom. Michela Wrong's It's Our Turn to Eat (2009) shows how it works in Kenya: critics dismissed John Githongo's anti-corruption campaign as imported 'mzungu' values, the charge the word compresses. It is a slur in every one of these places.
- 9A Pacific Islander, used as a derogatory ethnic label.
The commentator lost his job after referring to the visiting Samoan team as coconuts.
A drunk outside the bar called him a coconut as he walked past with his Fijian teammates.
Note
This slur has a different origin from the brown-outside insults and makes no charge of assimilation. In New Zealand it labels Pacific Islanders by the coconut palms that are everywhere in their home islands, reducing people to scenery. Treat it as an insult in every context. Mixing it up with the assimilation sense misreads what the speaker meant, but it does not excuse the speaker.
- 10A Malay person who cannot speak Malay; a derogatory label implying loss of one's heritage.
His grandmother in Penang muttered that the city had turned her Malay grandson into a coconut.
Cousins teased her as a coconut whenever she stumbled through basic Malay greetings.
Note
Singapore narrows the charge from culture to language. Here the white inside is a missing mother tongue, not a taste for white ways. It is still a slur and a reproach for lost heritage, so it is risky even as teasing. Compare the Malaysian Tamil use, where the label is more often turned on oneself.
- 11An Indian person who cannot speak Tamil; a derogatory label, often used self-deprecatingly within the community.
At family weddings she introduced herself, half joking, as the resident coconut who needed everything translated from Tamil.
His Tamil-speaking cousins ribbed him as a coconut every time he visited.
Note
Malaysian Indians often say it about themselves. A speaker who cannot follow Tamil claims the label before anyone else can. That self-deprecating turn softens it among insiders, but from an outsider it is still an ethnic slur. The language test matches the Singapore Malay use; what differs is who usually says it.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of coconut apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
Formed from "coco" and "nut". When used of assimilated Hispanic or black people, it comes from the fruit's exotic origins and the slur that they are "brown on the outside, white on the inside"; when used of Polynesians, it comes from how common coconut palms are in the area.