swine-bread

• swinebread

swine-bread (countable and uncountable, plural swine-breads)

1. Any plant of the genus Cyclamen.

   Synonyms: hog's bread, groundbread, sowbread

   • 1696, Jean Dumont (Baron de Carlscroon), A New Voyage to the Levant: Containing an Account of the moſt Remarkable Curioſities in Germany, France, Italy, Malta and Turkey, page 68:

     'Tis not ſo hard a Task to know the delicious Earth-Apples or Swine-bread, that are ſo cheap in this Country;

   • 1855, Anne Pratt, The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Great Britain, Volume 3, page 41:

     The fondness of swine for the roots originated the English as well as some of the continental names of the plant. Swine-bread is an old name for it; and the French call it Pain de Porceau, or, as it is provincially termed, Pain de pur.

2. (obsolete, rustic) A plant of species Conopodium majus or its tuber.

   Synonyms: kippernut, arnut, jarnut, hawknut, earth chestnut, groundnut, earthnut, pignut, hognut, Saint Anthony's nut

3. (obsolete, rustic) A truffle, Tuber fungus.
   • 1877, W. Collett-Sandars, “Truffles”, in Gentleman's Magazine, volume CCXLI, Picadilly: Chatto & Windus, page 732:

     The truffle is most frequently met with in the southern counties of England, in the chalky soil of the South Downs, and an experienced truffle-hunter who came from the West Indies about the year 1790, after investigating the whole coast from the Land's End to the mouth of the Thames, pitched upon Patching, five miles east of Arundel, as the most favourable spot for the scene of his future operations, and there he appears to have been fairly successful; whilst in “Notes and Queries” we have an account of a search conducted in Hampshire, which, though on a limited scale, was remunerative enough to form the support of two families. “Swine-bread” is said to have been the somewhat unromantic name bestowed on our “diamant de la cuisine” by the rural population, though we rather suspect that some confusion must have arisen in the bucolic mind with the “pig-nut,” the bulbous root of the Bunium bulbo-castanum, of which swine are very fond.