Sesame is a tiny pale seed sprinkled on buns and pressed for oil. Sesame seeds, sesame oil, a sesame bun.
The seeds are toasted for flavour, ground into tahini, and pressed for an oil used across the Middle East and East Asia. Sesame is one of the oldest cultivated oilseeds, grown for something like four thousand years, and the pods burst open when ripe — which is where open sesame comes from in the Ali Baba tale. Note that sesame is a major allergen and must be labelled in Britain and the EU.
1nounsesameA tiny pale seed used in cooking and pressed for oil.
“The burger buns were sprinkled with sesame seeds.”
sesame is a seed.
Greek sesamon came through Latin from Aramaic and ultimately from Akkadian shamashshammu, oil plant. It is one of the oldest words in English traceable to Mesopotamia.
Greek
σησάμη
akk
šamaššammum — oil plant
arc
שושמא
Ancient Greek
σήσαμον
Latin
sīsamum
Middle English
sisamie
English, today
sesame
Built from
From late Middle English sisamie, from Latin sīsamum, sēsamum, from Ancient Greek σήσαμον, from arc שושמא, shortening of שומשומא, from akk šamaššammum (“oil plant”), compound of šamnum (“oil”) and šammum (“plant”). The modern pronunciation is perhaps influenced by (transliterations of) Greek σησάμη. a doublet of sesamum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA