Meaning & use
a quince
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Meanings
nouncountable
A hard, yellow fruit that looks like a large apple or pear and tastes sour, usually cooked before eating.
Grammar: Countable: you can say a quince, two quinces, or some quinces.
Patterns
- a ripe quince
- cook quinces with sugar
- quince jelly
She picked a quince from the tree and left it on the kitchen table to soften.
Quinces are too sour to eat raw, so we usually stew them with sugar.
The shop sells quince jelly in small glass jars.
nouncountable
The small tree that produces this fruit, often grown in gardens for its pretty pink flowers.
Grammar: Countable when it means the tree: a quince, several quinces.
Patterns
- plant a quince
- a flowering quince
They planted a quince at the bottom of the garden.
Our quince is covered in pale pink blossoms every spring.
Word forms
| plural | quinces |
|---|
Common combinations
- quince jelly
- Breakfast was toast with quince jelly.
- stewed quince
- Stewed quince makes a simple dessert with cream.
- a ripe quince
- Only a ripe quince turns from green to gold.
- quince tree
- The quince tree needs a sunny spot.
Synonyms and how they differ
- pear
- A pear is a soft, sweet fruit of similar shape; a quince is harder and much more sour, so it is normally cooked.
Word family
- quince noun
- The fruit or the tree, without the article: quince is also used for the food in general.
Commonly confused: a quince or mince?
a quince vs mince
Mince sounds similar but means finely chopped meat, or to cut food very small.
Practice
Which sentence uses the fruit word correctly?
Choose one answer.
Quinces are hard and sour, so they are normally cooked, and the plural "quinces" is correct. Option An is wrong because raw quince is not sweet, C treats it as a drink, and D needs the plural "quinces" for three trees.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “a quince”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.