cabbage - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

A cabbage field in Lancashire

From Middle English caboche, cabage (“cabbage”; “a certain fish”), a borrowing from Anglo-Norman[1][2] caboche (“head”), a northern variant of caboce,[3] of uncertain origin. Some authorities derive it from Latin caput (“head”),[2] others from ca- (said to be an expressive prefix) + boce (“hump; bump”) (whence English boss).[1][4]

A head of cabbage.

cabbage (countable and uncountable, plural cabbages)

  1. An edible plant (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) having a head of green leaves.
    • 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 53:
      In aphrodisiac preparation, wild cabbage was frequently an ingredient.
    1. (by extension) Any of various cultivars of the species Brassica oleracea.
  2. (uncountable, vegetable) The leaves of this plant eaten as a vegetable.
    Cabbage is good for you.
  3. (countable, offensive) A person with severely reduced mental capacities due to brain damage.
    After the car crash, he became a cabbage.
  4. Used as a term of endearment.
  5. (uncountable, slang) Money.
  6. (uncountable, slang) Marijuana leaf, the part that is not smoked but from which cannabutter can be extracted.
  7. A terminal bud of certain palm trees, used for food.
  8. A cabbage palmetto (Sabal palmetto), a palm of the southeastern US coasts and nearby islands.
  9. (slang, African-American Vernacular) A human head.
    • 2024, “Cult Status”, performed by JPEGMAFIA:
      American made choppas / You beefin', we split ya cabbage

specific cultivar

any of various cultivars

leaves of this plant eaten as a vegetable

money

Translations to be checked‌: "plant"

cabbage (third-person singular simple present cabbages, present participle cabbaging, simple past and past participle cabbaged)

  1. (intransitive) To form a head like that of the cabbage.
    to make lettuce cabbage
  2. (intransitive, slang) To do nothing; to idle; veg out.
    • 2006, Steve Mckevitt, Why the World Is Full of Useless Things, page 38:
      How effective the project was is a moot point, because there were never any studies carried out to see whether children benefited from cabbaging in front of the TV rather than interacting with a teacher.
  3. (slang, African-American Vernacular) To be killed or murdered, such as by being shot in the head.

Unclear. Perhaps from Dutch *kabbassen, from Old French cabasser (“put into a basket”), from cabas.[5] Alternatively, perhaps from an earlier word *carbage (“shred”), a potential variant of *garbage (“wheat straw”).[1]

cabbage (uncountable)

  1. (slang) Scraps of cloth which are left after a garment has been cut out, which tailors traditionally kept.

cabbage (third-person singular simple present cabbages, present participle cabbaging, simple past and past participle cabbaged)

  1. (transitive) To embezzle or purloin; to pilfer, to steal.

    • 1733, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], Alexander Pope, compiler, “Law is a Bottomless Pit. Or, The History of John Bull. […]. [The First Part.] Chapter X. Of John Bull’s Second Wife, and the Good Advice that She Gave Him.”, in Miscellanies, 2nd edition, volume II, London: […] Benjamin Motte, […], →OCLC, page 30:
      [Y]our Butler purloins your Liquor, and your Brevver ſells your Hogvvaſh; […] your Taylor, inſtead of Shreds, cabages vvhole Yards of Cloth; […]
    • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
      We toted in the wood and got the fire going nice and comfortable. Lord James still set in one of the chairs and Applegate had cabbaged the other and was hugging the stove.

  2. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 “cabbage”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.

  3. ↑ 2.0 2.1 “cabbage”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

  4. ^ “caboche, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

  5. ^ Etymology and history of “caboche”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

  6. ^ William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “cabbage”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.