onion
/ˈʌnj(ə)n/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.89 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A monocotyledonous plant (Allium cepa), allied to garlic, used as vegetable and spice.
noun
Any of various plants, mostly of the genus Allium, that are more or less similar to Allium cepa.
noun
Alternative letter-case form of Onion (“an inhabitant of Bermuda; a Bermudian”).
Example Sentences
- "Some of the weeds that cause an undesirable flavor in milk are: onion, tarweed, scaleweed, garlic, mustard, pepper grass."
- "To get started, how about creating an edible window box? Sowed in the spring, salad seeds like radish, lettuce and spring onion will germinate so quickly that you'll be harvesting a crop in a month or two."
- "My eyes are stinging from the chopped onions."
- "Among the ancient Greeks, onions are most frequently mentioned as a stimulus to sexual desire."
- "dorrẹ̅, dōrī adj. & n. […] cook. glazed with a yellow substance; pome(s ~, sopes ~. […] 1381 Pegge Cook. Recipes p. 114: For to make Soupys dorry. Nym onyons […] Nym wyn […] toste wyte bred and do yt in dischis, and god Almande mylk."
- "Goulash, a local favorite, was brought up-to-date with seared grass-fed rib-eye, stewed cippolini onions and roasted cherry tomatoes."
Etymology
From Middle English onyoun, oynoun, from Old French oignon, from Latin ūniōnem, accusative of ūniō (“onion”), which had also been borrowed into Old English as yne, ynnelēac (“onion”) (> Middle English hynne-leac, henne-leac). Displaced the inherited term ramsons. * (soy): Stems from a 4chan word filter which changes the word soy to onions. The word filter was implemented in relation to the "alpha onion eater" meme, which is depicted as the direct opposite of the soy boy.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: onyoun, oignon, ūniōnem
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈʌnj(ə)n/
- British English: /ˈʌnjən/