tomato

noun

1. 1

   A widely cultivated plant, Solanum lycopersicum, having edible fruit.

2. 2

   The savory fruit of this plant, most often red when ripe, treated as a vegetable in horticulture and cooking.

   He was chopping a tomato to put in the salad.

   He was eating a tomato when his boss called him.

3. 3

   A shade of red, the colour typical of a ripe tomato.

4. 4

   slangAn attractive woman.

   Deborah Harry, the New Wave goddess, is finally admitting -- after all the peroxide and posturing of the 1970's and 80's -- that she's really just a tomato (her word) from Paterson […].

   When she left the room, I asked Robert, “Who's the tomato?” “Marisa. She's from Mexico.” He had a telltale smile on his face.

   2015 19 Old-Fashioned Compliments We Should Bring Back That shirt makes you look like such a glorious tomato.

   “Who's the tomato?” a cop said as Evie walked past. “Her? She's the stiff's niece,” another cop answered.

5. 5

   slangA stupid act or person.

adjective

1. 1

   Of a shade of red, the colour of a ripe tomato.

   Her face is on the cover: the Anne Estelle Rice portrait – or the black-eyed Japanese-bobbed head-and-shoulders bit of it – and the square-yoked dress is tomato, or pomegranate, but never persimmon. If it stayed too long in the sun and faded, well yes, maybe then…

   And she’d slathered a heavy layer of foundation over the raw skin of her face with the end result being a complexion that was more tomato than orange.

   This afternoon, though, she saunters in, draped in a dress the color of a ripe tomato, with a hat to match, her hair twisted underneath in some kind of fashionable up-do that seems impossible to create oneself. […] Penny is sitting there, on the bed, next to me, chewing on the end of the pen, dressed in her frivolous tomato dress.

verb

1. 1

   rareTo pelt with tomatoes.

2. 2

   rareTo add tomatoes to (a dish).

Forms

plural

tomatoes

comparative

more tomato

superlative

most tomato

past tense

tomatoed

past participle

tomatoed

present participle

tomatoing

third person singular

tomatos