Other forms: lentils
A lentil is a tiny flat pulse that cooks into soup. Red lentils, a bag of lentils, lentil soup.
Red ones collapse into a puree and green and brown ones hold their shape, which decides which dish they suit. They need no soaking, unlike most pulses, which is why they are the quickest of the family. The lens is named after the shape.
1nounlentilA tiny flat pulse that cooks into soup.
“She made a thick lentil soup with carrots and cumin.”
lentil is a pulse.
Latin lenticula is a diminutive of lens, a lentil. The optical lens took its name from the shape.
Latin
lenticula
Old French
lentille
Middle English
lentile
English, today
lentil
From Middle English lentile, from Old French lentille from Latin lenticula, diminutive of lēns, from a pre-Indo-European qfa-sub source shared by German Linse, Ancient Greek λάθυρος and Lithuanian lęšis. a doublet of lenticula.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA