Definition of "maguey"

Tequilla and mescal are similar, both liquors being distilled fom the maguey plant.

1899, Consular Reports: Commerce, manufactures, etc, page 375

“Well: hardly,” said the Consul, softly as before, casting a suspicious eye for his part in the other direction at some maguey growing beyond the barranca, like a battalion moving up a slope under machine-gun fire.

1947, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 138

[…] and they rode through strange forests of maguey—the aloe or century plant—with immense flowering stalks that rose forty feet into the desert air.

1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian […]

through black fields, where tlachiqueros brought sheepskins slung across their backs full of fresh maguey juice to be fermented, and campesinos in white lined the right-of-way

2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 424