tuckahoe

• tockwough [17th c.]

From Powhatan tockawhoughe. The "person" sense implies that such a person was so poor as to be reduced to eating the root.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtʌkəhəʊ/

tuckahoe (countable and uncountable, plural tuckahoes)

1. Any edible root of a plant of species Peltandra virginica, used by Native Americans of colonial-era Virginia.
   • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 142:

     In June, July, and August, they feed upon the rootes of Tockwough berries, fish, and greene wheat.

   • 1996, Karen Mueller Coombs, Sarah on Her Own:

     The ponderous beast had spent the summer eating tuckahoe roots, the autumn eating acorns and nuts, and was now as heavy as two stout men.

   Synonyms: wild potato, arrow arum

2. (uncommon, US, Virginia dialect, largely obsolete) A person, especially if poor and malnourished (or if implied to be), living east of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.

   Coordinate term: Cohee

   • 1828 February 8, "Tusgarora" (pen name), in a letter to the editor of The American Farmer, page 372:

     […] at least until you either get poor Tuckahoe out of his present hobble, in furnishing so many strong suspicions against the sincerity of his former professions of patriotism, […]

   • 1963, Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, The Old South: the founding of American civilization, page 213:

     The poor Tuckahoe, however, when he purchased land in Washington County, or the Shenandoah, or in Rowan, seems to have left behind him, not only his worn-out fields and his tumbledown house, but his wasteful methods.

3. The sclerotium of wood-decay fungi of species Wolfiporia extensa, used by Native Americans and the Chinese as food and as a herbal medicine.
4. The flowering plant Orontium aquaticum.