Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An aromatic annual Eurasian herb (Coriandrum sativum) in the parsley family, having parsleylike leaves and umbels of tiny white to pinkish flowers. It is cultivated for its edible fruits, leafy shoots, and roots.
  • noun The seedlike fruit of this plant, used whole or ground as a flavoring for food and as a seasoning, as in curry powder.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The popular name of the umbelliferous plant Coriandrum sativum.
  • noun The fruit of this plant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) An umbelliferous plant, the Coriandrum sativum, the fruit or seeds of which have a strong smell and a spicy taste, and in medicine are considered as stomachic and carminative.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The annual herb Coriandrum sativum: used in many cuisines.
  • noun The dried seeds thereof, used as a spice.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun Old World herb with aromatic leaves and seed resembling parsley
  • noun dried coriander seeds used whole or ground
  • noun parsley-like herb used as seasoning or garnish

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English coriandre, from Old French, from Latin coriandrum, from Greek koriandron.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French coriandre, from Latin coriandrum, from Ancient Greek κορίαννον (koriannon).

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Examples

Comments

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  • in British English, coriander is the leaf, also known as cilantro, dhania and Chinese parsley.

    April 20, 2007

  • All too often while shopping for groceries, I find myself plunging my face into the biggest bunch of coriander I can find and inhaling until my lungs are swollen with the vivifying, coppery, earthy fragrance.

    April 14, 2011

  • Whenever I see an instance of this word I recall Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) mentioning one of his new favorite bedtime stories, Captain Coriander Salamander and ’er Single-Hander Bellylander in one of the strips (being the sequel to his perennial favorite, Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie). Those titles were burned into my mind somehow.

    January 23, 2013

  • There's a Calvin and Hobbes Search Engine

    Here's the Coriander strip http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/06/25

    and the search engine http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/

    January 23, 2013

  • Comment on pepper. Also usage/historical note on sacrament.

    November 30, 2016

  • "At the Mycenaean palace complex of Pylos, built sometime around 1300 B.C. and destroyed around 1100 B.C.--the era generally identified with the Trojan War--archaeologists found that no less than 15 percent of the clay tablets recording the palace inventories dealt with various herbs and aromatics. When the language of the tablets was deciphered and found to be an early form of Greek, the names of numerous aromatics emerged. Coriander was there, easily recognizable as ko-ri-a-da-na. Tablets from the contemporary palace complex at Mycenae, according to legend the home of King Agamemnon, Helen's brother-in-law, contain cumin (ku-mi-no) and sesame (sa-sa-ma), both words of Semitic origin."

    --Jack Turner, _Spice: The History of a Temptation_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 240

    December 6, 2016