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Glite Dictionary
Welsh onion

Welsh onion

3.1
A plant with long green stems and small white bulbs used in cooking for a mild onion taste
  • noun
translation icon : cebolla galesa
  • You can use Welsh onions in recipes just like regular green onions in stir-fries and salads.

Examples

  • Two Welsh onions, used for seasoning, sold yesterday for 6,500 won, twice what they cost last year, while a bunch of five chives was 2.6 times more expensive at 12,400 won.

    Blog text (15)

  • I added sliced Welsh onions to the salad for extra flavor and crunch.

  • The chef garnished the soup with finely chopped Welsh onions to enhance its presentation.

Synonyms

green onion
vsWelsh onion
  • US
12 1.1

A young onion with a long green stalk and mild taste eaten raw in salads

is a specific species used similarly in cooking rather than any immature bulb stage
Allium fistulosum
vsWelsh onion
  • Specialized
7.0

A kind of onion with long hollow green leaves used as green onions

is the common cooking name used in kitchens rather than the scientific term

Surface Forms

Welsh onion singular
Welsh onions plural

Morphology

Welsh + onion

The compound is a straightforward adjective + noun construction: a learner who knows 'Welsh' (pertaining to Wales) and 'onion' (the vegetable) will infer it denotes a kind or variety of onion, likely associated by name with Wales. This compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common for naming plant varieties, so the core meaning is immediately inferable to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Welsh onion may come from an old word where Welsh meant 'foreign' or 'different', not from Wales. People used that word for a thin, green-leaf onion that does not form a big bulb, so the name stuck and now means the mild, green onion we use in cooking.