legume

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French legume (“fruit of a leguminous plant”), now légume,^[2][3][4] from Latin legūmen (“pulse, leguminous plant”).^[2][4][3] The further origin of the Latin word is uncertain.^[5][4] Varro derived it from legō (“to gather”), since the fruit can be gathered by hand,^[5] and Klein, Merriam-Webster, Collins, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English accept this,^{[6][7][8][9][10]} but Etymonline calls the word of unknown origin, and Barnhart reports that Ernout and Meillet suggest a non-Indo-European word with a Latin ending.^[4][5] The OED records the French word in the sense "fruit of a leguminous plant" from 1530, as a leguminous plant from 1575, as lesgum for such plants collectively in the 14th century, and as any vegetable from 1653.^[2] It compares Catalan llegum, Italian legume, Portuguese legume and Spanish legumbre (“vegetable”).^[2] Middle English had the word in the Latin form legumen from the late 14th century.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The edible seeds or pods of a leguminous plant, pulse: 1597, in P. Lowe's Whole Course of Chirurgerie, in the OED's revised entry.^[2] This is earlier than the dates in other dictionaries: 1676 in Barnhart and Merriam-Webster, the 1670s in Etymonline, and the mid 17th century in the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English.^{[5][7][4][9][10]}

Semantic evolution

The word began as a food term and widened from pulses to any vegetable, in a 1653 translation of La Varenne's French Cook, a use from French that is chiefly plural and now mainly found on menus.^[2][7] The plant itself was called a legume from 1687, in the Philosophical Transactions,^[2] and the botanical sense of a particular kind of pod, taken from scientific Latin, dates from 1751, in J. Hill's General Natural History.^[2] Merriam-Webster singles out forage and green-manure crops such as clover and alfalfa.^[7] The adjective leguminous is recorded before 1425 in Middle English, for something containing meal from such seeds, and again from 1656, in Blount's Glossographia.^[5] American slang has used legume for a button of peyote and, on campuses, for a lazy person, both recorded in the early 1980s.^[11]

Timeline

• late 14th century – the Latin form legumen in Middle English.^[4]
• 1597 – the edible seeds or pods of a leguminous plant.^[2] Barnhart has 1676.^[5]
• 1653 – any vegetable used as food.^[2]
• 1687 – a leguminous plant.^[2]
• 1751 – in botany, a seed pod of the type found in the pea family.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A plant of the pea and bean family, especially one grown for forage or to enrich the soil, such as clover or alfalfa.^[8][7][2]
2. The edible seed or pod of such a plant; a pulse: Lentils are a cheap legume.^[7][2][8]
3. A long dry fruit of such a plant, which splits along two sides when ripe; a pod.^[8][7][2]
4. Any vegetable used as food, chiefly in the plural and on menus.^[7][2]

Word family

• legumin
• nonlegume

Related words

• leguminous
• legumen
• legend
• lecture

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com