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medlar Definition

med·lar (med′lər)

noun

  1. a small tree (Mespilus germanica) of the rose family, growing in Europe and Asia
  2. its small, brown, applelike fruit, hard and bitter when ripe and eaten or used in preserves when partly decayed

Etymology: ME medler < OFr medler, meslier < mesle, the fruit < L mespilum < Gr mespilon

medlar Quotes

My aim all along has been (in Ezra Pound's term) the most drastic desuetization of Scottish life and letters, and, inparticular, thede-Tibetanizationofthe Highlands and Islands, and getting rid of the whole gang of high mucky-mucks, famous fatheads, old wives of both sexes, stuffed shirts, hollow men with headpieces stuffed with straw, bird-wits, lookers-under-beds, trained seals, creeping Jesuses, Scots Wha Ha'evers, village idiots, policemen, leaders of white-mouse factions and noted connoisseurs of bread and butter, glorified gangsters, and what 'Billy' Phelps calls Medlar Novelists (the medlar being a fruit that becomes rotten before it is ripe),Commercial Calvinists, makers of 'noises like a turnip', and all the touts and toadies and lickspittles o the English Ascendancy, and their infernal women-folk, and all their skunkoil skulduggery.

—Grieve