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sprouts

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,488 of 15,258neutral

Sprouts are the small round green buds eaten at Christmas. Brussels sprouts, boil the sprouts, nobody likes sprouts.

They grow up a thick stalk, dozens to a plant, and they taste bitter to some people and not to others because of a gene affecting the perception of certain compounds — the argument at the table is genuinely biological. Modern varieties are far less bitter than those of forty years ago. Note that the name comes from Brussels, where they were widely grown.

Definitions of sprouts

  1. 1nounsproutsSmall round green buds eaten as a vegetable.B1+

    “We always have roast turkey with sprouts and potatoes for Christmas dinner.”

sprouts is a vegetable.

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    sproute

  2. English

    sprout

  3. English, today

    sprouts

sprout comes from Middle English sproute, either from Middle English sprouten (“to sprout”) (see below); or from Middle Dutch sprute or Middle Low German sprûte (“sprout”), all related to Proto-West Germanic spreutan. a doublet of spruit.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Food & Drink

Practise this word

sprouts in the wild

  • A plant that produces root sprouts or runners is described as surculose.

    Basal shoot

  • Mung bean sprouts are a culinary vegetable grown by sprouting mung beans.

    Mung bean sprout

  • A notable variant of lumpiang gulay is lumpiang togue, which is made mostly with togue (mung bean sprouts).

    Lumpiang gulay

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.