Tobacco

Part of speech: noun (n.)

1. An American plant (Nicotiana Tabacum) of the Nightshade family, much used for smoking and chewing, and as snuff. As a medicine, it is narcotic, emetic, and cathartic. Tobacco has a strong, peculiar smell, and an acrid taste.

2. The leaves of the plant prepared for smoking, chewing, etc., by being dried, cured, and manufactured in various ways. Tobacco box (Zoöl.), the common American skate. -- Tobacco camphor. (Chem.) See Nicotianine. -- Tobacco man, a tobacconist. [R.] -- Tobacco pipe. (a) A pipe used for smoking, made of baked clay, wood, or other material. (b) (Bot.) Same as Indian pipe, under Indian. -- Tobacco-pipe clay (Min.), a species of clay used in making tobacco pipes; -- called also cimolite. -- Tobacco-pipe fish. (Zoöl.) See Pipemouth. -- Tobacco stopper, a small plug for pressing down the tobacco in a pipe as it is smoked. -- Tobacco worm (Zoöl.), the larva of a large hawk moth (Sphinx, or Phlegethontius, Carolina). It is dark green, with seven oblique white stripes bordered above with dark brown on each side of the body. It feeds upon the leaves of tobacco and tomato plants, and is often very injurious to the tobacco crop. See Illust. of Hawk moth.