Cauli

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A casual name for the cabbage-family vegetable that produces a compact white head of tightly clustered florets
2. Informal clipping of the name for the pale, dense-headed vegetable from the brassica family
3. Familiar shortened term for the white-headed brassica vegetable whose florets are eaten cooked or raw

Etymology: "Cauli" is a clipping of "cauliflower," so its history is the history of that longer word. The first half of "cauliflower" goes back to Latin "caulis," meaning stem or cabbage, which English met through the vegetable's older name, "cole." The second half is simply "flower," a word that describes the vegetable's head of tightly packed flower buds. The compound was first recorded in the 16th century as "cole-florye," a name built from "cole" and "flower." Over time, spellers reshaped it to look more like its Latin source, producing the form we know today. The result is a name that seems to describe the plant as a flowering cabbage, which is exactly what it is. Some cabbage relatives, like broccoli, share this look, but the cauliflower's head is the pale, dense cluster that gives the plant its name. Cauliflower's relatives in other languages follow the same pattern. French calls it "chou-fleur" and Italian "cavolfiore," both combining a word for cabbage with a word for flower, so English and its European neighbors all describe the vegetable the same way.

Synonyms: cauliflower