Other forms: peas
A pea is a small round green seed eaten as a vegetable. Frozen peas, a pod of peas, pea soup.
Frozen ones are usually sweeter than fresh, because the sugar turns to starch within hours of picking and freezing stops it. Mendel worked out inheritance by breeding them. The word is a back-formation: the singular was pease, and English mistook it for a plural and made pea.
1nounpeaA small round green seed eaten as a vegetable.
“The little boy pushed his peas around the plate but wouldn't eat them.”
pea is a vegetable.
A back-formation from pease, an old singular mistaken for a plural, from Latin pisum, from Greek pison.
Ancient Greek
πίσον
Latin
pisa
Old English
pise
Middle English
pese — a pea
English, today
pea
Back-formation from pease. a back-formation from pease, an original singular reinterpreted as a plural. Further from Middle English pese (“a pea”), from Old English pise, from Latin pisa, pisum, from Ancient Greek πίσον.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA