Chefling

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A young or inexperienced cook who is still learning the craft of professional kitchen work
2. An apprentice or junior chef working under the direction of more senior kitchen staff
3. A novice in a professional kitchen, typically a trainee still developing culinary skills

Etymology: "Chefling" is a compound of "chef" and the suffix "-ling," which in English typically forms diminutives or names young or small versions of things, as in "duckling" or "gosling." Here the suffix attaches to "chef," the French word for a head cook, itself from "chef de cuisine," literally "head of the kitchen." Chef came into English from French, and "chefling" follows the same pattern, though the resulting sense is more playful than strictly diminutive. The word is also a doublet of two older English words, "chiefling" and "headling." Doublets are words that share a common ancestor but reached English by different routes or at different times, so "chefling," "chiefling," and "headling" all descend from the same root idea of a leader or head, each shaped by a different path into the language. Chefling thus sits within a small family of words that all use the notion of "head" as their starting point.