Meaning
The Spanish lime — a small, round, green-skinned fruit that grows in tight bunches. You crack the tight skin with your teeth to reach the sweet-and-sour, salmon-coloured jelly pulp clinging to a large seed, which you suck clean. A favourite childhood treat sold in bunches at the roadside in season, genip is messy, sociable eating — cracking and sucking and spitting the seed — and its pulp famously stains clothes. Also called guinep or ackee-genip, it is one of the small, cheap delights of a Jamaican summer.
Examples
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Wi climb di tree fi pick genip.
We climbed the tree to pick guinep.
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Genip juice stain up mi shirt.
Guinep juice stained my shirt.
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Suck di genip, nuh swallow di seed.
Suck the guinep, don't swallow the seed.
Origin
From a Taíno/Carib word for the fruit (Melicoccus bijugatus), which also gives Spanish 'quenepa' across the Caribbean.
How it’s used
In season, sold in bunches at the roadside. Spelled 'genip' or 'guinep'; a messy, beloved fruit of Jamaican summers.