Word for Wednesday: Cabbage

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Our Word for Wednesday theme for November is vegetables! 

A vegetable is a plant or part of a plant that is used for food. The word dates to the mid-fifteenth century when it meant 'non-animal life’ and was used to describe any type of plant. It has been used in reference to plants specifically grown for food since 1767.

Our first word of the month is cabbage. A cabbage is a vegetable with large thick green or purple leaves that grow around a spherical heart. 

The word dates to the mid-fifteenth century and comes from the Old French ‘cabace’ which means ‘head’ and is a diminutive of the Latin word ‘caput’. Cabbages are likely named for their similarity in shape and size to human heads and we still use the description ‘a head of cabbage’ today. Other head-related words that come from ‘caput’ are ‘capital’, ‘captain’, ‘cap’, and ‘decapitate’. 


 


04 Nov 2020
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