vanilla

n. type of vine cultivated for its seed pods from which a popular flavor is extracted; seed pod of the vanilla plant; flavor extracted from the vanilla plant, any synthetically produced flavor resembling the vanilla flavoring

Vanilla is a flavouring derived from orchids in the genus Vanilla native to Mexico. The name came from the Spanish word "", meaning "little pod".
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Noun
1. any of numerous climbing plants of the genus Vanilla having fleshy leaves and clusters of large waxy highly fragrant white or green or topaz flowers
(hypernym) orchid, orchidaceous plant
(hyponym) vanilla orchid, Vanilla planifolia
(member-holonym) genus Vanilla
2. a flavoring prepared from vanilla beans macerated in alcohol (or imitating vanilla beans)
(synonym) vanilla extract
(hypernym) flavorer, flavourer, flavoring, flavouring, seasoner, seasoning
(substance-meronym) vanilla bean
3. a distinctive fragrant flavor characteristic of vanilla beans
(hypernym) relish, flavor, flavour, sapidity, savor, savour, smack, tang

(n.)
The long podlike capsules of Vanilla planifolia, and V. claviculata, remarkable for their delicate and agreeable odor, for the volatile, odoriferous oil extracted from them; also, the flavoring extract made from the capsules, extensively used in confectionery, perfumery, etc.
  

(n.)
A genus of climbing orchidaceous plants, natives of tropical America.
  

1. (Default flavour of ice cream in the US) Ordinary flavour, standard. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavoured with vanilla extract! For example, "vanilla wonton soup" means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. Applied to hardware and software, as in "Vanilla Version 7 Unix can't run on a vanilla PDP 11/34." Also used to orthogonalise chip nomenclature; for instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a 74LS00, etc. This word differs from canonical in that the latter means "default", whereas vanilla simply means "ordinary". For example, when hackers go to a chinese restaurant, hot-and-sour wonton soup is the canonical wonton soup to get (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the vanilla wonton soup.
[Jargon File]
(1994-11-04)
2. Snobol4 by Catspaw, Inc. for MS-DOS.
ftp://cs.arizona.edu/snobol4/vanilla.arc.
(1992-02-05)