chickpea

Etymology

It is formed from English chich + pease,^[2][3] modelled on Middle French pois chiche, which it translates.^[2][4][1] The first element is the obsolete name of the plant, recorded from before 1382,^[2] from Middle English chiche,^[5] from Anglo-Norman and Middle French chiche, probably an alteration of Old French cice after the adjective for "miserly",^[2] from Latin cicer (“chickpea”).^[2][5][4] The second element is the original form of pea,^[3] from Old English pise,^[6] from Late Latin pisa, a variant of Latin pisum.^[2][6] The first element was later respelled by folk etymology, probably under the influence of chick,^[7][8][4] and Ayto stresses that the plant has nothing to do with chickens.^[4] Etymonline calls the Latin word of uncertain origin, with likely cognates in Ancient Greek κίκερροι (kíkerroi, “pale”), an Armenian word for the chickpea and Albanian thjer (“lentil”).^[3][9] De Vaan allows Jokl's source for Latin and Albanian, Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₃- (“to feed”), but finds that the Armenian form points rather to a loan from an unknown source,^[9] as the American Heritage Dictionary also holds.^[8] The Latin plural cicera gave Italian cece and Old High German chihhra, whence German Kichererbse.^[3] Ayto also bases the name of the orator Cicero on this word.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The seed of Cicer arietinum: 1542, in T. Elyot's Bibliotheca, under Cicero.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

English first had the simple noun chich: the Wycliffite Bible has "fried chichis" for Latin cicer, and a cookery text of before 1399 has "Take chiches and wry hem in ashes al nyȝt".^[5] It remained the usual name for several centuries, according to Ayto, and the OED records it to 1808 before it was superseded by the compound.^[4][2] The second element was remodelled after pea, since pease could be taken as a plural.^[2][3] The spelling with chick- is dated to 1712 by Etymonline and to about 1722 by Merriam-Webster.^[3][7][10] The word names both the seed and the plant,^[8][7] and the American Heritage Dictionary and Collins give garbanzo as another name for it.^[8][11]

Timeline

• 1542 – the seed of Cicer arietinum, as a compound of chich and pease.^[2][3]
• 1712 – the spelling chick-pea.^[3] Merriam-Webster dates it to about 1722.^[7][10]
• 1808 – last record of the older simple noun chich.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The round, firm, edible seed of Cicer arietinum; a garbanzo.^{[8][7][11][2]}
2. The plant that bears it, a bushy leguminous herb of Asian origin grown for food.^[8][7][11]

Related words

• pea
• pease
• chich
• chickling
• Cicero

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
5. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins