hyacinth bean

Questions about hyacinth bean

What does hyacinth bean mean?

hyacinth bean means "perennial twining vine of Old World tropics having trifoliate leaves and racemes of fragrant purple pea-like flowers followed by maroon pods of edible seeds; grown as an ornamental and as a vegetable on the Indian subcontinent; sometimes placed in genus Dolichos".

What is another word for hyacinth bean?

Close synonyms include bonavist, Indian bean, Egyptian bean, Lablab purpureus, Dolichos lablab. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hyacinth bean a common word?

hyacinth bean is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.