Vanilla Meaning
/vəˈnɪl.ə/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounAny tropical climbing orchid of the genus Vanilla (especially Vanilla planifolia), bearing podlike fruit yielding an extract used in flavoring food or in perfumes.
nounThe fruit or bean of the vanilla plant.
Sentence Examples
Two vanilla ice creams, please.
I like vanilla ice cream very much.
The only flavor ice cream that Tom eats is vanilla.
CEFR Practice Quiz
For her simple cake, she used plain ____ extract instead of something fancy.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
She chose ____ ice cream for her dessert, as it is her favorite flavor and it goes perfectly with the cake today.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree Proto-Italic *wāgīnā Latin vāgīna Old Spanish vayna Spanish vaina Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Indo-European *-elós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -lus Latin -ellus Latin -ella Old Spanish -iella Spanish -illa Spanish vainillabor. English vanilla Borrowed from Spanish vainilla, a diminutive form of vaina (“pod”). "Plain" senses derive from the perceived plainness of vanilla ice cream.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Vanilla itself was transplanted from Madagascar, the main source of the spice, to Polynesia a century ago."
— 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 242:
"A mass of folders and binders. One, vanilla in colour, catches her eye."
— 2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton), →ISBN:
"BBCFiles is a BBC file converter that converts between some of the various types of files used by BBC emulators on Acorn & PC formats. It supports 6502Em style applications & scripts, /ssd dfs disc images (supporting watford double catalogue), vanilla directories, /zip of bbc files with /inf files (with limitations) and directory of bbc files with /inf files."
— 2001, Michael Foot, “BeebIt 0.32 and BBCFiles 0.29 released”, in comp.sys.acorn.announce (Usenet):
"An uncharacteristically vanilla threesome and non-cute realist rendering - derived paradoxically from tracing drawings rather than photographs."
— 2006, Felix Lance Falkon, Gay Art: A Historic Collection, →ISBN, page 136:
"While Dominick was more of a vanilla kind of a guy himself, he wasn't a total dunce when it came to the kinkier sides of things."
— 2010, Chloe Stowe, Hard Water, →ISBN, page 37:
Explore More A2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
For her simple cake, she used plain ____ extract instead of something fancy.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
She chose ____ ice cream for her dessert, as it is her favorite flavor and it goes perfectly with the cake today.