(Old Testament) food that God gave the Israelites during the Exodus
<noun.food>
Manna \Man"na\ (m[a^]n"n[.a]), n. [L., fr. Gr. ma`nna, Heb. m[=a]n; cf. Ar. mann, properly, gift (of heaven).] 1. (Script.) The food supplied to the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness of Arabia; hence, divinely supplied food. --Ex. xvi. 15.
2. (Bot.) A name given to lichens of the genus {Lecanora}, sometimes blown into heaps in the deserts of Arabia and Africa, and gathered and used as food; called also {manna lichen}.
3. (Bot. & Med.) A sweetish exudation in the form of pale yellow friable flakes, coming from several trees and shrubs and used in medicine as a gentle laxative, as the secretion of {Fraxinus Ornus}, and {Fraxinus rotundifolia}, the manna ashes of Southern Europe.
Note: {Persian manna} is the secretion of the camel's thorn (see {Camel's thorn}, under {Camel}); {Tamarisk manna}, that of the {Tamarisk mannifera}, a shrub of Western Asia; {Australian, manna}, that of certain species of eucalyptus; {Brian[,c]on manna}, that of the European larch.
{Manna insect} (Zo["o]l), a scale insect ({Gossyparia mannipara}), which causes the exudation of manna from the Tamarix tree in Arabia.
Yes, rain, the manna from heaven Midwest farmers hoped and prayed for these past few years, has flooded fields, delayed planting and damaged crops.
Lloyd George had nothing concrete to offer, just windy words: "Greece must go through the wilderness, she must live on manna picked up from the stones, she must struggle through the stern trial of the present time," he told a Greek interlocutor.
But the Black Wednesday devaluation of sterling brought manna from heaven.
With lackluster Diamond trading at 13 5/8, Mesa's offer looks like "manna from heaven," Jack Aydin of McDonald & Co. says.
"There will be no manna from heaven," says Yevgeny Primakov, one of Mr. Gorbachev's closest advisers.