plantain

1. 1.

   any of numerous plants of the genus Plantago; mostly small roadside or dooryard weeds with elliptic leaves and small spikes of very small flowers; seeds of some used medicinally

   Broaderherb

   NarrowerEnglish plantainbroad-leaved plantainhoary plantainfleawortrugel's plantain

   Part ofPlantago
2. 2.

   a banana tree bearing hanging clusters of edible angular greenish starchy fruits; tropics and subtropics

   Synonymsplantain treeMusa paradisiaca

   Broaderbanana
3. 3.

   starchy banana-like fruit; eaten (always cooked) as a staple vegetable throughout the tropics

   Broadervegetable

Other forms of plantain

plural

plantains·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about plantain

What does plantain mean?

plantain means "any of numerous plants of the genus Plantago; mostly small roadside or dooryard weeds with elliptic leaves and small spikes of very small flowers; seeds of some used medicinally". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in plantain?

plantain has 2 syllables: plan-tain. The stress falls on "plan". In IPA it is /ˈplæntən/.

What is another word for plantain?

Close synonyms include plantain tree, Musa paradisiaca. 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 plantain a common word?

plantain is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.