Escarola

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of leafy green lettuce with curly or ruffled edges, often used in salads and known for its slightly bitter flavor
2. A variety of salad greens featuring broad, crisp leaves with a somewhat bitter taste, commonly utilized in Mediterranean cuisine
3. A leafy vegetable characterized by its frilly appearance and mildly bitter flavor, frequently included in fresh salads and cooked dishes

Etymology: Escarola is the Spanish and Italian name for endive, a bitter leafy green, and in English it has come to mean a curly-leaved variety of the same plant, often called escarole. The word comes from Latin "escariola," a derivative of "esca," meaning food, the same root that gives English "eschar" in some technical senses and the Latin "esculentus," edible. The English form entered through Spanish and Italian trade and cookery writing rather than through the Norman French that brought most of our food vocabulary, so it arrived as a foreign name for an unfamiliar vegetable. Its path is a little tangled. Latin "intybus" named chicory and endive, and the Romans had several related terms, so "escarola" sits among a cluster of bitter salad greens that were easy to confuse with one another. Italian and Spanish speakers kept the name for the broad-leaved, frilly types, while the tightly curled variety, which English speakers now usually mean, is the one that gives the word its modern sense.

Synonyms: escarole, endive, chicory, lettuce