olive

Pluralolives

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The small, oval fruit of the olive tree, eaten either unripe, when it is usually green, or ripe, when it is usually black.

   The recipe called for a handful of olives, pitted and halved.

   He picked a ripe olive straight from the branch and ate it.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The tree Olea europaea, grown around the Mediterranean since ancient times for its fruit and the oil pressed from it.

   The ancient olive in the courtyard still bears fruit every year.

   Groves of olives stretch across the hills of southern Spain.

   Note

   The sense the rest of the word grows from. English took it through Middle English olyve and Old French olive from Latin olīva. That Latin word came either from Etruscan or from an early Greek form related to Mycenaean e-ra-wa and Ancient Greek elaía, or from whatever source those two shared. The fruit, the wood and the color all take their name from this tree.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A dark green with a yellowish tinge, like the color of an unripe olive.

   The designer chose olive for the fall collection's main coat.

   Deep olives and browns dominated the room's color scheme.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of the gray-green shade seen in unripe olives.

   His olive complexion deepened after a summer outdoors.

   The hills turned an olive shade in the dry heat.

   Note

   The adjective sits most naturally before a noun for skin or cloth. Harold Bindloss's The Dust of Conflict (1907) gives a character an olive face. Shane R. Reeves and David Wallace (2015) describe Crimea's "little green men" in unmarked olive uniforms. It compares as more olive and most olive. For the color named as a thing in its own right, see the noun.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The wood obtained from the olive tree.

   The cutting board was made of polished olive.

   Olive takes a beautiful finish when sanded smooth.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A dish made by seasoning a small slice of meat, rolling it up, and cooking it.

   The chef rolled each olive around a spoonful of herb stuffing.

   Traditional Sunday dinners often featured olives braised in rich gravy.

   Similarroulade

   Note

   A cook's olive contains no fruit at all. It is a thin slice of meat, typically beef or veal, spread with seasoning or forcemeat, rolled and braised. The meat is usually named alongside it, either in front (a beef olive) or after (olives of veal). That naming is the simplest way to make clear you mean the dish and not the fruit.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A ring in a plumbing compression joint, placed between the nut and the pipe and compressed during fastening to form a seal.

   Tightening the nut compresses the olive against the pipe wall.

   He fitted brass olives to every joint under the sink.

   Similarferrule

8. 8
   nouncountable

   An oval prominence of the medulla oblongata, the lowest part of the brain stem.

   The olive forms a visible bulge on the surface of the medulla.

   Nerve fibers from the olive travel up to the cerebellum.

   Note

   Anatomists use the word for either of the paired oval swellings on the ventral medulla oblongata, more formally called the olivary body. Inside each lies the inferior olivary nucleus. Its neurons project to the cerebellum and help with the timing and coordination of movement. The adjective olivary carries the same image into related terms such as olivary nucleus.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   Any shell of the genus Oliva and related groups, named for its olive-like shape.

   A polished olive gleamed among the other shells in the display.

   Beachcombers often mistake young cones for olives.

   Note

   Shell collectors prize these glossy, cylindrical sea-snail shells, named for their resemblance to the fruit. The scientific genus name, Oliva, is simply the Latin word behind the tree, so the everyday name and the formal one say the same thing in two languages.

10. 10
    noundialectalUKcountable

    An oystercatcher, any of the long-billed shore birds that make up the genus Haematopus.

    At low tide the olives gathered to feed on the exposed mudflats.

    The fisherman spotted an olive picking at mussels on the rocks.

    Similaroystercatcher

    Note

    A British dialect name for the oystercatcher, the stout, long-billed wader of rocky and sandy shores. Outside the places that use it, most readers will take the word to mean the fruit. In general writing, call the bird an oystercatcher, and keep olive for quoting local speech or giving a scene its regional color.

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