water chestnut

noun

1

: any of a genus (Trapa, especially T. natans of the family Trapaceae, the water-chestnut family) of Old World aquatic herbs sometimes grown as ornamentals

also : its edible nutlike spiny fruit

2

: a whitish crunchy vegetable used especially in Chinese cooking that is the peeled and often sliced tuber of a sedge (Eleocharis dulcis synonym E. tuberosa) native to Asia but widely cultivated elsewhere

also : the tuber or the sedge itself

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

The most obvious order here is the Signature Bamboo Fungus Whole Chicken Soup, which gets your pot filled with chicken broth, plus chunks of fresh ginger, strips of coconut meat, fresh longan (a lychee-adjacent fruit), water chestnuts, and phallic, hollow cylinders of bamboo fungus. —Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2023

Started by the immigrant owners of the highway's gas stations and strip malls to feed their workforce, these small but phenomenal dining establishments are popular today with folks from across the city, who will brave the Atlanta traffic for the vermicelli salads and water chestnut dumplings. —Von Diaz, Condé Nast Traveler, 5 July 2022

At the flagship MingHin in Chinatown or other locations get the classics, like tender snow skin shrimp dumplings or hearty golden pork and shrimp siu mai, plus newer pan-fried tofu skin vegetable rolls and subtly sweet water chestnut cakes. —Ariel Cheung, chicagotribune.com, 4 Aug. 2021

Butter lettuce filled with ground bison, sweet onion, water chestnut, ginger, carrot, soy and hoisin sauce. —Cheryl V. Jackson, The Indianapolis Star, 6 July 2022

Recently, Friends of the Blackstone held an invasive water chestnut pull. —Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 30 June 2022

Once dessert was on the table—tapioca with fresh coconut, water chestnut and mint leaf—Lindbergh did go home. —Sarah Medford, WSJ, 8 Dec. 2021

Dangerous-looking fruit is from a water chestnut, a plant that has been part of our diet since Neolithic times. —Leslie Nemo, Scientific American, 29 June 2021

The moonflower found wrapped around a water chestnut tree at the CUBG was obtained in 2015 from the Bonn Botanic Garden in Germany, but bloomed for the first time this year, reports the BBC. —Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Mar. 2021

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Word History

First Known Use

1597, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

water chestnut

noun

: a whitish crunchy vegetable used especially in Chinese cooking that is the peeled underground stem of an Asian sedge

also : the sedge or its underground stem