Chef

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ʃɛf/

Definitions

1. A professional cook who manages a kitchen and prepares meals in a restaurant or other food establishment
2. A culinary expert responsible for cooking dishes, supervising kitchen staff, and ensuring food quality in a dining setting
3. An individual skilled in the art of cooking who directs kitchen operations and creates various recipes in a hospitality environment

Etymology: The word "chef" is a shortened form of the French phrase "chef de cuisine," meaning "head of the kitchen," and it began life as a term for a leader of any kind. Its root is the Latin "caput," meaning "head," the same ancestor that gave English "chief," "captain," and "chieftain." The Vulgar Latin form "capus" passed into Old French as "chief," meaning "head" or "leader," and French then narrowed it in the kitchen: "chef d'office" and "chef de cuisine" named the person in charge of a household's food preparation. English took the shortened "chef" directly from French, so it keeps its French pronunciation and has never been fully anglicised. The word "cape," meaning a headland, is a doublet of "chef" that came through Latin, and it shares the same ultimate source. Through Proto-Indo-European, "chef" is also linked to the English "head," so the kitchen boss and the human skull trace back to a single ancient root.

Synonyms: cook, culinarian, kitchen manager