What does "pokeweed" mean?

A poisonous North American plant, Phytolacca americana, with reddish stems, broad leaves, clusters of white flowers, and dark purple berries.

Pokeweed

Q: What is a synonym for "pokeweed"?

Common synonyms include: american nightshade, american pokeweed, belladonna, cancer root, coakum, garget.

//ˈpoʊkˌwid// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A poisonous North American plant, Phytolacca americana, with reddish stems, broad leaves, clusters of white flowers, and dark purple berries. countable, uncountable
"Native Americans introduced whites and slaves to several edible greens including marigold, milkweed, and pokeweed (Whit 2007). Slaves boiled pokeweed and often mixed it with turnip greens because it was thought that the two vegetables enhanced each other's flavor."
2
perennial of the genus Phytolacca wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

american nightshade american pokeweed belladonna cancer root coakum garget

Example

More examples

"Native Americans introduced whites and slaves to several edible greens including marigold, milkweed, and pokeweed (Whit 2007). Slaves boiled pokeweed and often mixed it with turnip greens because it was thought that the two vegetables enhanced each other's flavor."

Etymology

From poke + weed. The first element is from Powhatan pocan.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.