maguey

See also: magüey

English

Maguey agave plant with blossoms

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish maguey, from Taíno *mawei.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /məˈɡeɪ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

maguey (plural magueys)

1. Any of various large agaves of Mexico and the southern US, especially the American aloe, Agave americana.

   Synonyms: agave, pita, century plant

   • 1899, Consular Reports: Commerce, manufactures, etc, page 375:

     Tequilla and mescal are similar, both liquors being distilled fom the maguey plant.

   • 1947, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 138:

     “Well: hardly,” said the Consul, softly as before, casting a suspicious eye for his part in the other direction at some maguey growing beyond the barranca, like a battalion moving up a slope under machine-gun fire.

   • 1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian […] , →OCLC:

     […] and they rode through strange forests of maguey—the aloe or century plant—with immense flowering stalks that rose forty feet into the desert air.

   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 424:

     through black fields, where tlachiqueros brought sheepskins slung across their backs full of fresh maguey juice to be fermented, and campesinos in white lined the right-of-way

Derived terms

• Cebu maguey
• maguey worm
• red maguey worm (Comadia redtenbacheri)
• white maguey worm (Aegiale hesperiaris)

Translations

North American agave

• Cebuano: magay
• Classical Nahuatl: metl
• Galician: agave (gl) f
• Mezquital Otomi: uada
• Quechua: qara
• Spanish: maguey (es) m, pita (es) f

References

• maguey on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Agave americana on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Agave americana on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Agave americana at USDA Plants database

Spanish

Alternative forms

• magüey

Etymology

Borrowed from Taíno *mawei.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /maˈɡei/ [maˈɣ̞ei̯]
• Rhymes: -ei
• Syllabification: ma‧guey

Noun

maguey m (plural magueyes)

1. (Latin America) maguey (large species of agave)

   Synonym: pita

Derived terms

• flor morada
• maguey morado

 

Further reading

• “maguey”, in Diccionario de la lengua española (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy, 2023 November 28