Colander

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈkɒləndə(ɹ)/

Definitions

1. A kitchen utensil designed to separate liquids from solids by allowing the former to flow through its perforated surface
2. A tool commonly employed to rinse vegetables and pasta while retaining food items for preparation
3. A bowl-shaped device with holes used in cooking to drain water from food items like pasta or vegetables

Etymology: The kitchen colander is named for a process rather than a shape: its ancestor word came from Latin "cōlātōrium," a straining vessel built from "cōlāre," to strain or filter. That Latin verb grew out of "cōlum," a strainer or sieve, and the same root traveled into other languages with the same job. Italian "colino" and Spanish "colador" are cognates, meaning they descend from the same source and still name the same kitchen tool. On the English side, the word arrived in Middle English as forms like "colyndore," "coloundour," and "colonur." These were variants of an earlier Middle English word, "culdor" or "culdore," which shows how the spelling wandered for centuries before settling into the form we use now. Each scribe spelled it according to his own ear, so the same object could appear under several different names in a single manuscript tradition. Because the modern word is the end of a long chain of altered spellings, it looks far from its Latin source. The strainer's purpose, however, has not changed since the Romans first used "cōlum" for sieving liquids.

Synonyms: strainer, sieve, filter