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American Dictionary of the English Language

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Nutmeg


NUT'MEG, noun [Latin But it may be questionable whether the last syllable in English, meg, is not from Latin , mace, the bark that envelops the nut.] The fruit of a tree of the genus Myristica, growing in the isles of the East Indies and South Sea. The tree gorws to the gighth of thirty feet, producing numerous branches. The color of the bark of the trunk is a reddish brown; that of the young branches a bright green. The fruit is of the kind called drupe, that is, a pulpy pericarp without valves, containing a nut or kernel. The covering of this nut is the mace. The nutmeg is an aromatic, very grateful to the taste and smell, and much used in cookery.