cassava

Etymology

It is borrowed from Taíno casávi (“cassava flour”), the word of the Taino language of Haiti, also recorded as caçábi and cazábbi.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The earliest English forms took the Taino word as it was, and the present spelling was altered after French cassave.^[5][3][7] According to Merriam-Webster and Collins it is borrowed from Spanish cazabe (“cassava bread”),^[8][9] and Barnhart has it from the same French word, itself from Spanish casabe, and an earlier English form of 1555 taken directly from Spanish.^[10] Etymonline allows French, Spanish or Portuguese cassave as the source.^[11] Wiktionary reconstructs the Taino word as *kasabi.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The plant itself: in 1555, in Richard Eden's translation of Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World.^[2][8] Etymonline dates cassava to the 1560s and cazabbi to the 1550s,^[11] and Barnhart has casava in 1565.^[10]

Semantic evolution

From 1577 the word also meant the starch or flour pressed out of the grated roots, and the bread baked from it.^[2][3] The Shorter Oxford records a variant cassada,^[3] which the ODEE dates to the 17th century,^[12] and Collins names the two kinds of the plant, bitter cassava and sweet cassava.^[9][3] The plant is also called by its Brazilian name, manioc,^[2][8] and its starch is the source of tapioca.^[9][13] In Caribbean English the root is also called cassada and, in Guyana, cassava-stick.^[14] Bartlett listed cassabi as a West Indian name in 1848.^[15]

Timeline

• 1555 – the plant, in Eden's translation of Peter Martyr.^[2][8]
• 1565 – the spelling casava.^[10]
• 1577 – the flour from its roots, and bread made from it.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A shrubby tropical American plant of the spurge family (Manihot esculenta), grown throughout the tropics for its large, starchy roots; manioc.^[13][8][3]
2. The root of this plant, a staple food in the tropics, eaten only after it has been treated to remove its cyanide.^[13][3]
3. The starch or flour made from the roots, the source of tapioca, or the bread made from it.^[9][2][8]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Onions, C. T., ed. (1966), The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
14. ^ Allsopp, Richard, ed. (1996), Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Bartlett, John Russell (1848), Dictionary of Americanisms, New York: Bartlett and Welford