potato

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  TWO PROFILE VIEWS OF A REMARKABLE POTATO
• WordNet 3.6
  • n potato an edible tuber native to South America; a staple food of Ireland
  • n potato annual native to South America having underground stolons bearing edible starchy tubers; widely cultivated as a garden vegetable; vines are poisonous
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Additional illustrations & photos:

A POTATO MASHER

The Potato Caterpillar

pan, kettle, potatoes and chicken feet

Granules of Potato Starch

• Interesting fact: In 1952, the first TV toy commercial aired. It was for Mr. Potato Head
• • n Potato (Bot) A plant (Solanum tuberosum) of the Nightshade family, and its esculent farinaceous tuber, of which there are numerous varieties used for food. It is native of South America, but a form of the species is found native as far north as New Mexico.
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• Interesting fact: There have been over fifty million Mr. Potato Heads sold since it came out in 1952
• • n potato The sweet potato. See below. [This was the original application of the name, and it is in this sense that the word is generally to be understood when used by English writers down to the middle of the seventeenth century.]
  • n potato One of the esculent tubers of the common plant Solanum tuberosum, or the plant itself. The potato is a native of the Andes, particularly in Chili and Peru, but in the variant boreale it reaches north to New Mexico. It was probably first introduced into Europe from the region of Quito by the Spaniards, in the earlier part of the fifteenth century. In 1586 it was brought to England from Virginia, where, however, it was probably derived from a Spanish source. Its progress in Europe was slow, its culture, even in Ireland, not becoming general till the middle of the eighteenth century; but it is now a staple food in most temperate climates. The fruit of the potato-plant is a worthless green berry; its useful product is the underground tubers, which in the wild plant are small, but are much enlarged under cultivation. These tubers, which are of a roundish or oblong shape, sometimes flattish, are set with “eyes,” really the axils of rudimentary leaves, containing ordinarily several buds, and it is by means of these that the plant is usually propagated. The food-value of the potato lies mostly in starch, of which it contains from 15 to 20 or 25 per cent. It is deflcient in albuminoids and phosphates. Besides their ordinary food-use. potatoes are a source of manufactured starch; and spirits are now distilled from them to a considerable extent, chiefly in Germany. The tops (in America called vines, in England halms, in Scotland shaws) contain, together with the fruit, a poisonous alkaloid, solanin, absent in the tubers except when exposed to the sun. The varieties of the potato are numerous. The crop is often seriously injured by the potato-beetle and the potato-rot. To distinguish it from the yellow sweet potato, this plant is sometimes called white potato or (from its being one of the chief food-staples in Ireland) Irish potato.
  • n potato The liliaceous genus Calochortus: so called from its bulb or corm.
  • n potato In Bengal, the yam.
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• Interesting fact: The vegetable that is eaten most by Americans is potatoes. On average, a person eats about 140 pounds of potatoes annually
• • n Potato pō-tā′tō one of the tubers of a plant almost universally cultivated for food in the temperate parts of the globe: the plant itself
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• Sir Thomas Overbore

  

  “The person who has nothing to brag about but their ancestors is like a potato; the best part of them is underground.”
• Woody Allen

  

  “Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”
• Georg C. Lichtenberg

  

  “If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.”
• Irish Proverb

  

  “It is easy to halve the potato where there is love.”
• Bette Davis

  

  “To fulfill a dream to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”
• Alan W. Watts

  

  “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

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