melinjo

noun

me·lin·jo me-'lin-(ˌ)jō

: a gnetum tree (Gnetum gnemon) of Southeast Asia that has glossy leaves used in cooking and bitter nutlike seeds used especially to make emping

Although the planting area may look like a monoculture from a distance, the upland is covered in a variety of fruit trees: coconut, … mangosteen, … and melinjo.—

Luh de Suryani

Add a handful of emping (crackers made from the seed of the melinjo plant) and a squeeze of lime to the soup …—

Thomas and Sheena Southam

A Thai restaurant serves dishes both familiar and more recherché. … crispy soft-shelled crab with green mango salad and betel leaves is, simply, a revelation, while other discoveries include stir-fried melinjo leaves …—

Teresa Levonian Cole

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Indonesian melinjo, belinjo, from Javanese Malay

Note: The word is entered in the Malay dictionary of R.J. Wilkinson (A Malay-English Dictionary, Romanised, Mytilene, Greece, 1932) as mĕninjau, mĕninjo, mĕninjon [ĕ = ə], with variants mĕnenjo (Malay of Palembang, Sumatra), bĕlinjau (Malay of Kedah), mĕlinjo, bĕlinju (Malay of Java). Wilkinson also references the Kawi [Javanese script]-Balinese-Dutch dictionary of Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk (Kawi-Balineesch-Nederlandsch woordenboek, vol. 4, Batavia, 1912, p. 520), which records the word as medinjo or malenjo. An early Western record of the word is in the Herbarium amboinense (Amsterdam, 1741), the posthumously published work of the botanist Georg Eberhard Rumpf or Rumphius (1627-1702). See note at gnetum.