Hottentot's bread

9.9

A large root that people eat and that grows in southern Africa

noun

NSFW

: pan hottentote

Local communities have traditionally harvested Hottentot's bread for its nourishing rootstock.

Examples

The explorers survived by eating Hottentot's bread they found in the wild.
When baked, Hottentot's bread develops a pleasantly sweet flavor and soft texture.
I tried Hottentot's bread for the first time last week.
Many people enjoy Hottentot's bread as a nutritious snack.
Local communities have traditionally harvested Hottentot's bread for its nourishing rootstock.
The explorers survived by eating Hottentot's bread they found in the wild.
When baked, Hottentot's bread develops a pleasantly sweet flavor and soft texture.

Synonyms

Hottentot bread

vsHottentot's bread

NSFW

9.9

A thick starchy root that people eat in southern Africa

has identical meaning but is written with a possessive apostrophe form

Surface Forms

Hottentot's bread singular

Hottentot's breads plural

Morphology

Hottentot's + bread

The combination of an ethnonym ('Hottentot's') with 'bread' makes it reasonably clear to a learner that this is an edible item associated with a people or region, so they would likely infer a type of food or staple. However, the specific botanical meaning (the elephant's-foot rootstock) and the archaic/culturally specific name are not predictable from the parts alone, so the relation is only partial.

Etymology

Hottentot's bread comes from early European settlers in southern Africa who used an old word for the local people, 'Hottentots', and saw them bake or eat the plant's large root like bread. That's why Hottentot's bread today refers to the plant's large edible root used as 'food'.