wild spinach
- noun
:
espinacas silvestres
- The chef added sautéed wild spinach to the pasta for a fresh and earthy flavor.
Examples
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She found some delicious wild spinach while hiking and decided to make a salad.
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In spring, we often forage for wild spinach in the fields near our home.
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It's wild spinach.
Synonyms
11
1.0
Leaves and stems of plants like spinach or kale eaten as vegetables
2
2.5
A plant food with green edible leaves like spinach or lettuce
2
1.9
A plant with green leaves and stems you eat
A common wild plant with soft green leaves you can cook and eat like spinach, also called lamb's quarters
A wild green plant with leaves you can eat like spinach
A wild leafy plant with edible leaves often used like spinach
A common wild plant with leaves you can eat and cook like spinach
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly inferable from combining 'wild' (growing naturally) with 'spinach' (an edible leafy green): a B1 learner who knows both constituents can understand it as spinach or spinach-like greens that grow in the wild. This is a straightforward adjectival-noun composition common cross-linguistically, so the sense is immediately comprehensible without special idiomatic knowledge.
Etymology
Wild spinach names leafy greens that grow wild and look like spinach, so people collect and eat them instead of garden spinach.