Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A sedge (Cyperus esculentus) sometimes cultivated for its edible nutlike tubers, and often occurring as a weed.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A species of sedge, Cyperus esculentus, the tuberous roots of which are used as a vegetable in the south of Europe.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A sedgelike plant (Cyperus esculentus) producing edible tubers, native about the Mediterranean, now cultivated in many regions; the earth almond.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Cyperus esculentus, a species of sedge native to warm temperate to subtropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere having small edible tubers.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun European sedge having small edible nutlike tubers

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish, from earlier chufa, mockery, joke (probably used of the tubers because they were considered to be of little value and perhaps also influenced by trufa, truffle), alteration of chufla, from chuflar, to whistle, ridicule, from Vulgar Latin *sufilāre, alteration of Latin sībilāre, sīfilāre, to hiss, whistle at.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Spanish, from Latin cyphi ("gallingale perfume").

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