water chestnut

Questions about water chestnut

What does water chestnut mean?

water chestnut means "a plant of the genus Trapa bearing spiny four-pronged edible nutlike fruits". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for water chestnut?

Close synonyms include water chestnut plant, caltrop, Chinese water chestnut, Eleocharis dulcis. 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 water chestnut a common word?

water chestnut 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.