Princeton's WordNet

1. vanilla(noun)

   any of numerous climbing plants of the genus Vanilla having fleshy leaves and clusters of large waxy highly fragrant white or green or topaz flowers

2. vanilla, vanilla extract(noun)

   a flavoring prepared from vanilla beans macerated in alcohol (or imitating vanilla beans)

3. vanilla(adj)

   a distinctive fragrant flavor characteristic of vanilla beans

4. vanilla(adj)

   flavored with vanilla extract

   "he liked vanilla ice cream"

5. vanilla(adj)

   plain and without any extras or adornments

   "the most common type of bond is the straight or plain vanilla bond"; "the basic car is known as the vanilla version"

Kernerman English Learner's Dictionary

1. vanilla(noun)əˈnɪl ə or, often, -ˈnɛl ə

   a sweet flavor used in desserts

   vanilla ice cream

Wiktionary

1. vanilla(Noun)

   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. vanilla(Noun)

   The fruit or bean of the vanilla plant.

3. vanilla(Noun)

   The extract of the fruit of the vanilla plant.

4. vanilla(Noun)

   The distinctive fragrant flavour/flavor characteristic of vanilla extract.

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

5. vanilla(Noun)

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

6. vanilla(Adjective)

   By association with vanilla as the "plain" flavour of ice cream: the standard, plain, default, unmodified, basic.

   vanilla suit.

Origin: From vainilla, diminunitive of vaina

Webster Dictionary

1. Vanilla(noun)

   a genus of climbing orchidaceous plants, natives of tropical America

2. Vanilla(noun)

   the long podlike capsules of Vanilla planifolia, and V. claviculata, remarkable for their delicate and agreeable odor, for the volatile, odoriferous oil extracted from them; also, the flavoring extract made from the capsules, extensively used in confectionery, perfumery, etc

The New Hacker's Dictionary

1. vanilla

   [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] Ordinary flavor, standard. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla extract! For example, vanilla wonton soup means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. Applied to hardware and software, as in “Vanilla Version 7 Unix can't run on a vanilla 11/34.” Also used to orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a 74LS00, etc. This word differs from canonical in that the latter means ‘default’, whereas vanilla simply means ‘ordinary’. For example, when hackers go on a great-wall, hot-and-sour soup is the canonical soup to get (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the vanilla (wonton) soup.

U.S. National Library of Medicine

1. Vanilla

   A plant genus of the family ORCHIDACEAE that is the source of the familiar flavoring used in foods and medicines (FLAVORING AGENTS).

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