vanilla

Borrowed from Spanish vainilla, a diminutive form of vaina (“pod”).

• IPA^(key): /vəˈnɪlə/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪlə
• IPA^(key): /vəˈnɛlə/
• Rhymes: -ɛlə

vanilla (countable and uncountable, plural vanillas)

1. (countable) Any tropical, climbing orchid of the genus Vanilla (especially Vanilla planifolia), bearing podlike fruit yielding an extract used in flavoring food or in perfumes.
2. (countable) The fruit or bean of the vanilla plant.

   Synonym: vanilla bean

3. (uncountable) The extract of the fruit of the vanilla plant.

   Synonym: vanilla extract

4. (uncountable) The distinctive fragrant flavour/flavor characteristic of vanilla extract.

   You can tell that the secret ingredient missing from New Coke^TM was vanilla, because certain South American economies collapsed when it was introduced, and miraculously revived when the old formula was used again.

5. (uncountable) Any artificially produced homologue of vanilla extract, principally vanillin produced from lignin from the paper industry or from petrochemicals.

   Synonym: imitation vanilla

6. (countable, sexuality, slang) Someone who is not into fetishism; a normophile
7. A yellowish-white colour, like that of vanilla ice cream.

   vanilla colour:  

• Cuban vanilla
• vanilla grass

• flavour extract

vanilla (comparative more vanilla, superlative most vanilla)

1. (of flavor, etc.) Of vanilla.
   • 2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

     A mass of folders and binders. One, vanilla in colour, catches her eye.

2. (colloquial, chiefly computing) Standard, plain, default, unmodified, basic.

   vanilla JavaScript

   • 2001, "Michael Foot", BeebIt 0.32 and BBCFiles 0.29 released (on newsgroup comp.sys.acorn.announce)

     BBCFiles is a BBC file converter that converts between some of the various types of files used by BBC emulators on Acorn & PC formats. It supports 6502Em style applications & scripts, /ssd dfs disc images (supporting watford double catalogue), vanilla directories, /zip of bbc files with /inf files (with limitations) and directory of bbc files with /inf files.

3. (sexuality) Not kinky, not involving BDSM.
   • 2006, Felix Lance Falkon, Gay Art: A Historic Collection, →ISBN, page 136:

     An uncharacteristically vanilla threesome and non-cute realist rendering - derived paradoxically from tracing drawings rather than photographs.

   • 2010, Chloe Stowe, Hard Water, →ISBN, page 37:

     While Dominick was more of a vanilla kind of a guy himself, he wasn't a total dunce when it came to the kinkier sides of things.

   • 2014, Christina Thacher, The Negotiation: A BDSM Romance, →ISBN:

     Sebastian could never do that, be in a marriage with a vanilla woman.

4. Plain; conventional; unimaginative.

• See also Thesaurus:bare-bones
• (sense: sexuality) normophilic

• vanillin

From English vanilla, from Spanish vainilla, diminutive of vaina (“pod”), from Latin vāgīna (“sheath”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈvaːnɪlːa/

vanilla f (genitive singular vanillu, nominative plural vanillur)

1. (usually singular only, uncountable) vanilla

• vanilluplanta