Vocabulary     

What does Honey mean?

Definitions for Honey
ˈhʌn ihon·ey

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word Honey.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. honeynoun

    a sweet yellow liquid produced by bees

  2. beloved, dear, dearest, honey, loveadjective

    a beloved person; used as terms of endearment

  3. honeyverb

    of something having the color of honey

  4. honeyverb

    sweeten with honey

Wiktionary

  1. honeynoun

    A viscous, sweet fluid produced from plant nectar by bees. Often used to sweeten tea or to spread on baked goods.

  2. honeynoun

    A variety of this substance.

  3. honeynoun

    Something sweet or desirable.

  4. honeynoun

    A term of affection.

    Honey, would you take out the trash?

  5. honeynoun

    A woman, especially an attractive one.

    Man, there are some fine honeys here tonight!

  6. honeyadjective

    Describing a thing involving or resembling honey.

  7. honeyadjective

    A spectrum of pale yellow to brownish-yellow colour, like that of most types of honey.

  8. Etymology: honig, from hunig, from hunagan (cf. hunich, Honig), from earlier (cf. honung), from pre-Germanic, from kh₂ónks (gen.) (cf. Middle Welsh canecon ‘gold’, Latin (pl.) canicæ ‘bran’, Tocharian B kronkśe ‘bee’, Albanian qengjë ‘beehive’, Ancient Greek κνηκός ‘pale yellow’).

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

  1. HONEYnoun

    1.A thick, viscous, fluid substance, of a whitish or yellowish colour, sweet to the taste, soluble in water; and becoming vinous on fermentation, inflammable, liquable by a gentle heat, and of a fragrant smell. We have three kinds of honey: the first and finest is virgin honey, not very firm, and of a fragrant smell: it is the first produce of the swarm, obtained by draining from the combs without pressing. The second is thicker than the first, often almost solid, procured from the combs by pressure: and the worst is the common yellow honey, extracted by heating the combs over the fire, and then pressing them. In the flowers of plants, by certain glands near the basis in the petals, is secreted a sweet juice, which the bee, by means of its probosis or trunk, sucks up, swallows it, flies away with it to the hive, and discharges again from the stomach through the mouth into some of the cells of the comb. The honey thus taken up into the body of the bee, and deposited again into the cells of the comb, is destined for the food of the young offspring; but in hard seasons the bees are sometimes reduced to the necessity of feeding on it themselves, and die of hunger after they have eat it all up. Honey, taken out of the new combs early in the Summer, is vastly preferrable to that taken from the same hive in Autumn. Honey is an excellent pectoral, is detergent, aperient, and diuretick. John Hill Mat. Med.

    Etymology: hunig, Saxon; honig, Dutch; honec, honag, German.

    So work the honey bees,
    Creatures that by a ruling nature teach
    The art of order to a peopled kingdom. William Shakespeare, Hen. V.

    The like contention is found among the Greeks, touching his education and first fostering: some affirm, that he was fed by honey bees. Walter Raleigh, History of the World.

    In ancient time there was a kind of honey, which, either of its own nature, or by art, would grow as hard as sugar, and was not so luscious as ours. Francis Bacon, Natural History.

    When the patient is rich, there’s no fear of physicians about him, as thick as wasps to a honey pot. Roger L'Estrange.

    Honey is the most elaborate production of the vegetable kind, being a most exquisite vegetable sope, resolvent of the bile, balsamick and pectoral: honey contains no inflammable spirit, before it has felt the force of fermentation; for by distillation it affords nothing that will burn in the fire. Arbuthn.

    New wine, with honey temper’d milk we bring;
    Then living waters from the crystal spring. Alexander Pope, Odyssey.

    The king hath found
    Matter against him, that for ever mars
    The honey of his language. William Shakespeare, Henry VIII.

    A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
    Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall. William Shakespeare.

    Honey, you shall be well desir’d in Cyprus;
    I’ve found great love amongst them. Oh, my sweet,
    I prattle out of fashion, and I dote
    In mine own comfort. William Shakespeare, Othello.

    Why, honey bird, I bought him on purpose for thee: did’st not thou say, thou long’dst for a Christian slave? Dryden.

  2. To Honeyverb

    To talk fondly.

    Etymology: from the noun.

    Nay, but to live
    In the rank sweat of an incestuous bed,
    Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
    Over the nasty sty. William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Wikipedia

  1. Honey

    Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primarily floral nectar) or the secretions of other insects, like the honeydew of aphids. This refinement takes place both within individual bees, through regurgitation and enzymatic activity, as well as during storage in the hive, through water evaporation that concentrates the honey's sugars until it is thick and viscous. Honey bees stockpile honey in the hive. Within the hive is a structure made from wax called honeycomb. The honeycomb is made up of hundreds or thousands of hexagonal cells, into which the bees regurgitate honey for storage. Other honey-producing species of bee store the substance in different structures, such as the pots made of wax and resin used by the stingless bee.Honey for human consumption is collected from wild bee colonies, or from the hives of domesticated bees. The honey produced by honey bees is the most familiar to humans, thanks to its worldwide commercial production and availability. The husbandry of bees is known as beekeeping or apiculture, with the cultivation of stingless bees usually referred to as meliponiculture. Honey is sweet because of its high concentrations of the monosaccharides fructose and glucose. It has about the same relative sweetness as sucrose (table sugar). One standard tablespoon (15 mL) of honey provides around 190 kilojoules (46 kilocalories) of food energy. It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor when used as a sweetener. Most microorganisms cannot grow in honey and sealed honey therefore does not spoil. Samples of honey discovered in archaeological contexts have proven edible even after thousands of years. Honey use and production has a long and varied history, with its beginnings in prehistoric times. Several cave paintings in Cuevas de la Araña in Spain depict humans foraging for honey at least 8,000 years ago. While Apis melifera is an Old World insect, large-scale meliponiculture of New World stingless bees has been practiced by Mayans since pre-Columbian times.

ChatGPT

  1. honey

    Honey is a sweet, sticky, and viscous substance that is produced by bees from the nectar of flowers. It is commonly used as a natural sweetener and flavoring agent in various food and beverages. Honey has a distinct taste and aroma and is known for its numerous health benefits and medicinal properties.

Webster Dictionary

  1. Honeynoun

    a sweet viscid fluid, esp. that collected by bees from flowers of plants, and deposited in the cells of the honeycomb

  2. Honeynoun

    that which is sweet or pleasant, like honey

  3. Honeynoun

    sweet one; -- a term of endearment

  4. Honeyverb

    to be gentle, agreeable, or coaxing; to talk fondly; to use endearments; also, to be or become obsequiously courteous or complimentary; to fawn

  5. Honeyverb

    to make agreeable; to cover or sweeten with, or as with, honey

  6. Etymology: [OE. honi, huni, AS. hunig; akin to OS. honeg, D. & G. honig, OHG. honag, honang, Icel. hunang, Sw. hning, Dan. honning, cf. Gr. ko`nis dust, Skr. kaa grain.]

Wikidata

  1. Honey

    Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to, as it is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans. Honey produced by other bees and insects has distinctly different properties. Honey bees transform nectar into honey by a process of regurgitation and evaporation. They store it as a primary food source in wax honeycombs inside the beehive. Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and has approximately the same relative sweetness as that of granulated sugar. It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor that leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey because of its low water activity of 0.6. However, honey sometimes contains dormant endospores of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which can be dangerous to infants, as the endospores can transform into toxin-producing bacteria in infants' immature intestinal tracts, leading to illness and even death. Honey has a long history of human consumption, and is used in various foods and beverages as a sweetener and flavoring. It also has a role in religion and symbolism. Flavors of honey vary based on the nectar source, and various types and grades of honey are available. It is also used in various medicinal traditions to treat ailments. The study of pollens and spores in raw honey can determine floral sources of honey. Bees carry an electrostatic charge whereby they attract other particles in addition to pollen, which become incorporated into their honey; the honey can be analysed by the techniques of melissopalynology in area environmental studies of radioactive particles, dust and particulate pollution.

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

  1. Honey

    hun′i, n. a sweet, thick fluid collected by bees from the flowers of plants: anything sweet like honey.—v.t. to sweeten: to make agreeable:—pr.p. hon′eying; pa.p. hon′eyed (-′id).—adj. (Shak.) sweet.—ns. Hon′ey-bag, an enlargement of the alimentary canal of the bee in which it carries its load of honey; Hon′eybear, a South American carnivorous mammal about the size of a cat, with a long protrusive tongue, which it uses to rob the nests of wild bees; Hon′ey-bee, the hive-bee; Hon′ey-buzz′ard, a genus of buzzards or falcons, so called from their feeding on bees, wasps, &c.; Hon′eycomb, a comb or mass of waxy cells formed by bees, in which they store their honey: anything like a honeycomb.—v.t. to fill with cells: to perforate.—adj. Hon′eycombed (-kōmd), formed like a honeycomb.—ns. Hon′ey-crock (Spens.), a crock or pot of honey; Hon′eydew, a sugary secretion from the leaves of plants in hot weather: a fine sort of tobacco moistened with molasses.—adjs. Hon′eyed, Hon′ied, covered with honey: sweet: flattering; Hon′eyless, destitute of honey.—ns. Hon′ey-guide, -indicator, a genus of African birds supposed to guide men to honey by hopping from tree to tree with a peculiar cry; Hon′ey-lō′cust, an ornamental North American tree; Hon′eymoon, Hon′eymonth, the first month after marriage, commonly spent in travelling, before settling down to the business of life.—v.i. to keep one's honeymoon.—adj. Hon′ey-mouthed, having a honeyed mouth or speech: soft or smooth in speech.—ns. Hon′ey-stalk, prob. the flower of the clover; Hon′ey-suck′er, a large family of Australian birds; Hon′eysuckle, a climbing shrub with beautiful cream-coloured flowers, so named because honey is readily sucked from the flower.—adjs. Hon′ey-sweet, sweet as honey; Hon′ey-tongued, having a honeyed tongue or speech: soft or pleasing in speech.—Virgin honey, honey that flows of itself from the comb; Wild honey, honey made by wild bees. [A.S. hunig; Ger. honig, Ice. hunang.]

U.S. National Library of Medicine

  1. Honey

    A sweet viscous liquid food, produced in the honey sacs of various bees from nectar collected from flowers. The nectar is ripened into honey by inversion of its sucrose sugar into fructose and glucose. It is somewhat acidic and has mild antiseptic properties, being sometimes used in the treatment of burns and lacerations.

CrunchBase

  1. Honey

    Honey is an enterprise social network that improves information sharing in the workplace. It's a beautiful intranet that people actually want to use to discover, discuss and archive information that matters. Hundreds of companies are using Honey to share knowledge and increase employee engagement.Honey was founded in 2012 and incubated at Huge Labs with funding from Interpublic Group. It is operated by Front & Main LLC in DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Rap Dictionary

  1. honeynoun

    Female, generally attractive. 2003 Hip-Hop Motion Picture with Jessica Alba, Mekhi Phifer, Missy Elliott, Ginuwine, Jadakiss, etc.

Editors Contribution

  1. honey

    A type of food and product.

    Honey is created, produced and processed on a global scale.


    Submitted by MaryC on December 2, 2016  

  2. honey

    A type of food created and produced by a variety of bees and other insects.

    Honey is produced by bumblebees, stingless bees, and other hymenopteran insects such as honey wasps, though the quantity is generally lower and they have different properties compared with honey from the genus Apis.


    Submitted by MaryC on December 2, 2016  

Suggested Resources

  1. honey

    The honey symbol -- In this Symbols.com article you will learn about the meaning of the honey symbol and its characteristic.

  2. honey

    Song lyrics by honey -- Explore a large variety of song lyrics performed by honey on the Lyrics.com website.

Surnames Frequency by Census Records

  1. HONEY

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Honey is ranked #10897 in terms of the most common surnames in America.

    The Honey surname appeared 2,923 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 1 would have the surname Honey.

    86.3% or 2,523 total occurrences were White.
    7.3% or 214 total occurrences were Black.
    2.6% or 76 total occurrences were of Hispanic origin.
    2.2% or 66 total occurrences were of two or more races.
    0.9% or 27 total occurrences were Asian.
    0.5% or 17 total occurrences were American Indian or Alaskan Native.

Matched Categories

British National Corpus

  1. Written Corpus Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'Honey' in Written Corpus Frequency: #4596

  2. Nouns Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'Honey' in Nouns Frequency: #2875

Usage in printed sourcesFrom: 

How to pronounce Honey?

How to say Honey in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of Honey in Chaldean Numerology is: 5

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of Honey in Pythagorean Numerology is: 4

Examples of Honey in a Sentence

  1. Walter Savage Landor:

    Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another.

  2. Adriana Ituarte:

    This is an artisanal beer, with 4% alcohol. This prototype is a lager, and it's made up of malt, rice and honey so it's good, and the idea is for it to be sold at bars that stock craft beer.

  3. Victor Hugo:

    Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

  4. Chuck Schumer:

    Secretary Zinke was one of the most toxic members of the cabinet in the way Secretary Zinke treated our environment, our precious public lands, and the way Secretary Zinke treated the government like it was Secretary Zinke personal honey pot, the swamp cabinet will be a little less foul without Secretary Zinke.

  5. H.W. Mann:

    Look at nature. A single bee cannot really do much. But you put a group of bees together and they can form a hive. A colony of bees that work in harmony. Each one doing its part. Some bees collect pollen. Some bees tend to the hive. Some bees guard the hive. Some bees tend to the nursery. Together they make a lot of honey.

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Popularity rank by frequency of use

Honey#1#6188#10000

References

Translations for Honey

From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary

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    not transmitting or reflecting light or radiant energy; impenetrable to sight
    A opaque
    B reassuring
    C occasional
    D frantic

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