Etymologically
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cuisine

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 22 October 2026 at 21:17. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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Pronunciation

  • /kwɪˈziːn/, /kəˈziːn/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French cuisine (“kitchen”),[2][3][4][5] inherited from Old French cuisine, which from the 12th century meant a kitchen, cooking and cooked food,[2] from Vulgar Latin *cocīna,[6][7] a variant of Latin coquīna (“kitchen, cookery”),[6][7][8] from coquō (“to cook”),[2][6][8][9] from Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- (“to cook, ripen”).[2][6] Etymonline and Klein treat the variant as recorded Late Latin rather than reconstructed.[2][8] Compare Italian cucina and Occitan cozina.[5][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A kitchen or culinary department, and the manner or style of cooking: 1786, in Hannah More's Florio.[5][2][7][3] Dictionary.com dates the word much earlier, to 1475–85.[11]

Semantic evolution

In French the word first meant the kitchen itself, and English took it up in the late 18th century mainly for the style of cooking.[2][5][9] The OED's single sense still joins the kitchen and its arrangements with the manner of cooking,[5] and Dictionary.com keeps the kitchen sense as archaic,[11] but modern dictionaries define it as a style of cooking, especially that of a country, region or establishment, and also as the food served by a restaurant or household.[4][12][6] French phrases came with it, such as haute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine and cuisine bourgeoise, plain home cooking.[12][1] By the mid-19th century a French cook could also be called a cuisinier.[12]

Timeline

  • 1475–85 – the date Dictionary.com gives.[11]
  • 1786 – a kitchen; a style of cooking.[5][2][3]
  • mid 19th century – cuisinier, a French cook.[12]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A characteristic style of cooking, especially one belonging to a particular country or region: Basque cuisine relies heavily on fish.
  2. The food prepared and served by a restaurant, hotel or household: The hotel's cuisine won high praise.
  3. (archaic) The kitchen or cooking department of a house or hotel.

Word family

  • haute cuisine
  • batterie de cuisine
  • chef de cuisine
  • nouvelle cuisine

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  5. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  7. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  8. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  11. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  12. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press