Link Centre Dictionary

chestnut

chest·nut

UK/ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)nʌt/ US/ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)ˌnʌt/ fairly common uk
adjective (1) noun (5)

adjective

1.

used of hair; of a golden brown to reddish brown color

  • “a chestnut horse”
  • “chestnut hair”
Similar

noun

1.

wood of any of various chestnut trees of the genus Castanea

2.

any of several attractive deciduous trees yellow-brown in autumn; yield a hard wood and edible nuts in a prickly bur

Synonyms
3.

edible nut of any of various chestnut trees of the genus Castanea

4.

a small horny callus on the inner surface of a horse''s leg

5.

a dark golden-brown or reddish-brown horse

Origin

The noun is a contraction of chest(en) (“(obsolete) chestnut tree; fruit of this tree, chestnut”) + nut. Chesten is a late variant of chesteine (obsolete), from Middle English chesten, chesteine, chasteine, chesteyne (“chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); fruit of this tree; wood of this tree”), from Old French chastaigne, chastaine (French châtaigne), from Latin castanea (“chestnut tree; fruit of this tree”) (whence Old English ċisten), from Ancient Greek κᾰστᾰ́νειᾰ (kăstắneiă), a variant of κᾰ́στᾰνᾰ (kắstănă, “sweet chestnut”); for further etymology, see that entry. Doublet of castanet. Noun sense 4 (“joke, phrase, etc., which has been repeated so often as to have grown ineffective or tiresome”) may refer to an 1816 play, The Broken Sword, by William Dimond (1781 - c. 1837), in which one character begins to relate a story in which a boy slips down from a cork tree, and another interrupts him to say that he had previously repeated the story many times, and always mentioned a chestnut tree. The adjective is probably from an attributive use of the noun; compare French (of hair) châtain (“chestnut”) (from châtaigne (“a chestnut”)) and marron (“brown”) (from marron (“a horse chestnut o...

Phrases

  • chestnut blight
  • chestnut canker
  • chestnut coal
  • Chestnut Hill
  • chestnut rose
  • chestnut-bark disease
  • liver chestnut
  • old chestnut

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

Narrower terms

Parts

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.