A piñata is a brightly decorated container, usually made from papier-mâché, cardboard or clay. It is filled with candy or small sweet fruit and nuts, and is hung up for celebrations like Easter or birthdays.
Children hit the piñata with sticks to try and break it so the candy falls out. Often they do this wearing blindfolds.
You pinch something when you grab it tightly between your forefinger and thumb.
Pinching is also a word for any similar motion to pinching with your hands, or something that feels like pinching. For example, "my new shoes pinch my feet".
Scientific name: pinus pinea
Pine nuts are the seeds of pine trees, most notably the stone pine. All pine tree seeds are edible, but only some varieties are big enough to be worth harvesting. Most pine nuts you buy in shops come from stone pines.
Pine nuts are a major ingredient of pesto.
Pine trees or conifers come in all shapes and sizes, although most are quite large trees. They all have some features in common. They all have cones instead of flowers. They all have leaves that look like thin green needles. Most pine trees grow from one central point at the top of the tree only and do not branch, which gives most pine trees a distinctive cone shape. Some species do branch, but not as much as most other trees do.
Because pine trees usually grow tall and straight without branching they are commonly grown as plantation timber to harvest their wood for building houses and furniture out of.
Scientific name: ananas comosus
Pineapples are a type of very sweet tropical fruit. Pineapples are eaten fresh, used in desserts, cakes and their juice is used in many drinks. You need to take off the prickly outside of the fruit before you can eat it.
Pineapple flowers are most often pollinated by the hummingbird.
Something is pinned if it is held in place by something, usually by a pin. You can pin something down without pins, for example "her hands were pinned to her sides".
