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milo

 
Dictionary: mi·lo   (') pronunciation
 
n., pl. -los.

An early-growing, usually drought-resistant grain sorghum, especially Sorghum bicolor, resembling millet.

[Possibly from Afrikaans mealie, corn, probably from Portuguese milho, from Latin milium, millet. See millet.]


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Word Origins: milo
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from Sotho
This word originated in South Africa and Lesotho

What's a nice African grass like milo doing on the western plains of the United States? Well, it's at home in a dry land, and that's why it was imported. It's a sorghum grain that doesn't need nearly as much water and care as corn, yet its seeds contain more protein than corn and just as much starch. In addition to making feed for farm animals and flour or meal for people, milo has lots of industrial uses. The waxy coat of the seed is used for shoe and furniture polish. Milo also shows up in adhesives, laundry starch, and sizing for fabrics.

Milo usually goes by the full name milo maize because it is a kind of maize, closely related to corn. It was introduced to the United States from South Africa in the late nineteenth century. A circular of the Georgia Department of Agriculture in 1883 mentions it by name: "My attention was some time since called to the claims of 'Ivory wheat' and 'Millo Maize' to a place in our long list of profitable food crops." The milo that that writer planted grew to a height of twelve feet.

In South Africa, the name comes from the Sotho language, where the word is maili. Sotho is spoken in two versions, northern and southern, by well over six million people in South Africa. It is a national language there and in Lesotho, the land-locked kingdom surrounded by South Africa. There it is spoken by 85 percent of the population, about one and a half million people.

Sotho is a Bantu language of the Niger-Congo language family. Another English word imported from Sotho is lechwe (1857), the name of an antelope that likes to wade in water.



 

A variety of sorghum used for grain, with the same toxic potential as fodder sorghum. Called also sorghum vulgare.

 
WordNet: milo
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: small drought-resistant sorghums having large yellow or whitish grains
  Synonym: milo maize


 
Wikipedia: Milo
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Contents

Milo may refer to:

  • Milo (name), a male name with a variety of unrelated and partly uncertain origins

Places

United States

People

Fictional characters

  • Milo, a rodent-like mammal in the "Stranger From the Mysterious Above" episode of the American television series The Land Before Time
  • Milo, the main character in Norton Juster's children's classic The Phantom Tollbooth
  • Milo, a character in Project Natal a video game for Xbox 360
  • Milo Bloom, the resident journalist in Berkeley Breathed's comic strip Bloom County
  • Milo Kerrigan, a "punch-drunk" boxer in the Australian television series Full Frontal
  • Milo Minderbinder, a character in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22
  • Milo Pressman, a computer analyst in the American television series 24
  • Milo Rambaldi, a medieval alchemist, engineer and mystic in the American television series Alias
  • Milo James Thatch, the main character in the Disney animated films Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Atlantis: Milo's Return
  • Brin Milo, a character in Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40,000 novel series
  • Scorpio Milo, a character from the Saint Seiya series of manga created by Masami Kurumada
  • Professor Milo, an enemy of Batman in the DC Comics universe
  • Milo (Chatran in the original Japanese version), the orange tabby cat in the film Koneko Monogatari (alternate title: "The Adventures of Chatran"; localized in English as The Adventures of Milo and Otis)
  • Milo, Stanley's dog in The Mask

Other meanings

See also


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Word Origins. The World in So Many Words, by Allan A. Metcalf. Copyright © 1999 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Veterinary Dictionary. Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary 3rd Edition. Copyright © 2007 by D.C. Blood, V.P. Studdert and C.C. Gay, Elsevier. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Milo" Read more