tobacco
Americannoun
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tobaccos,
plural
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tobaccoes
plural
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any of several plants belonging to the genus Nicotiana, of the nightshade family, especially one of those species, as N. tabacum, whose leaves are prepared for smoking or chewing or as snuff.
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the prepared leaves, as used in cigarettes, cigars, and pipes.
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any product or products made from such leaves.
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any of various similar plants of other genera.
noun
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any of numerous solanaceous plants of the genus Nicotiana, having mildly narcotic properties, tapering hairy leaves, and tubular or funnel-shaped fragrant flowers. The species N. tabacum is cultivated as the chief source of commercial tobacco
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the leaves of certain of these plants dried and prepared for snuff, chewing, or smoking
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of tobacco
1525–35; < Spanish tabaco, perhaps < Arawak: a pipe for smoking the plant, or roll of leaves smoked, or the plant
Explanation
Tobacco refers to the leaves of the tobacco plant that have been dried and processed for people to roll up and smoke. Tobacco is the main ingredient in cigarettes, and of course, chewing tobacco. Tobacco was used for fun in the Americas way before the Europeans came, but it was cultivated in France in the 1500s, and is still going strong. The word tobacco probably came from the Caribbean. The name Tobacco Road is from a novel by Erskine Caldwell, but is used to describe a section of North Carolina that produced a lot of tobacco. Tobacco is mainly used in cigarettes, which are really bad for your health.
Vocabulary lists containing tobacco
Central America and the Caribbean - Introductory
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Central America and the Caribbean - Middle School and High School
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Thomas Jefferson
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In 1614, after years of conflict with the settlers, he married off his teenage daughter Pocahontas to the English tobacco farmer John Rolfe, which brought a temporary truce.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
But if those particles are collected inside a flask, they form a dense suspension of burned tobacco -- a tar-like sludge.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026
Macnab likened this climate case to the successful series of lawsuits against big tobacco companies in the 1990s.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026
Trading Standards has described the proliferation of shops selling illicit tobacco as an "explosion" across Scotland's high streets.
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
From that time on, Isaac lived and worked in Petersburg, Virginia, then a booming tobacco, farm market, and slave-trading town that had become a center for some of the state’s first railroad lines.
From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis
For hobbies he collects pipes, strangely blended tobaccoes, old clocks.
From Time Magazine Archive
One need only put his head in at my door to realize that tobaccoes are of two kinds, the Arcadia and others.
From My Lady Nicotine A Study in Smoke by Maurice Brazil Prendergast
Latakia, Shiraz, Manila, Cuba, Virginia, and Maryland produce the most valuable tobaccoes.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860 by Various
I have given orders to the Farmers-General to treat in preference, and at a reasonable price, for the purchase of the tobaccoes of North America.
From The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI by Jared Sparks
It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it is myself.
From My Lady Nicotine A Study in Smoke by Maurice Brazil Prendergast
The shift from traditional smoking of indigenous tobaccos and other plants to commercial tobaccos has had “significant deleterious effects on tribal culture and health,” the study said.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 3, 2018
“It’s something we’ve been planning for,” said David Sylvia, a spokesman for Altria Group, the parent company of John Middleton, which manufactures the popular Black & Mild cigar brand and a variety of pipe tobaccos.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 24, 2013
In the home of fine Havana tobaccos, Hill is not honored.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Greek syndicates of gamblers; the late Sir Basil Zaharoff, merchant of death; tens of thousands of Greek traders in fruits, tobaccos, steamships have carried on the Ulysses tradition of wandering, guile and gain.
From Time Magazine Archive
Closely related species replace each other geographically among the amaranths, beans, chenopods, chili peppers, cottons, squashes, and tobaccos.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
