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potato

UK/pəˈteɪ.təʊ/US/pəˈteɪ.toʊ/
nounA1Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,297 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: potatoes

A potato is the brown vegetable that grows underground. Chips, mash, roast, and the bag in the bottom cupboard.

It is a tuber rather than a root, and it came to Europe from the Andes in the sixteenth century, going on to feed and then to starve whole countries. The plural takes an e, giving potatoes. English gets several phrases from it, including a hot potato for a subject nobody wants to handle and couch potato for somebody who does not get up. Sweet potato is a different plant entirely.

Scott Bauer, USDA ARS · Public domain

Definitions of potato

  1. 1nounpotatoA starchy tuber grown underground and eaten as a vegetable.A1

    “He peeled potatoes for the whole family.”

Phrases it lives in

  • a hot potato — a controversial subject nobody wants to deal with

Where it comes from

  1. tnq

    batata — sweet potato

  2. Spanish

    patata

  3. English, today

    potato

Spanish patata, itself borrowed from tnq batata (“sweet potato”). a doublet of batata.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Food & Drink, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

potato in the wild

  • French fries, or simply fries, also known as French fried potatoes, chips, and finger chips, are batonnet or julienne-cut deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin.

    French fries

  • Fries can be topped more heavily, as in the dishes of poutine, loaded fries or chilli cheese fries, and are occasionally made from sweet potatoes instead of potatoes.

    French fries

  • Wild potato species can be found from the southern United States to southern Chile.

    Potato

  • The Spanish introduced potatoes to Europe in the second half of the 16th century from the Americas.

    Potato

  • The global potato chip market generated total revenue of US$16.49 billion in 2005.

    Potato chips

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • couch potato
  • sweet potato