garden egg
- noun
- UK
:
berenjena
- The garden egg is a staple ingredient in many West African dishes.
Examples
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She harvested a basket full of ripe garden eggs from her backyard.
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Have you tried garden eggs before?
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In her stew, she added chopped garden egg for extra flavor and texture.
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I love to eat garden eggs in my salad.
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She harvested a basket full of ripe garden eggs from her backyard.
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In her stew, she added chopped garden egg for extra flavor and texture.
-
The garden egg is a staple ingredient in many West African dishes.
Synonyms
54
1.0
A purple vegetable with shiny skin that you can eat
3
5.1
A dark purple vegetable with smooth skin that you cook and eat
1
8.4
A purple vegetable like an eggplant that you cook and eat
A large purple vegetable with shiny skin that you cook and eat
A plant that produces large glossy purple or white fruits called eggplant
A short upright plant that grows large glossy purple eggplants used as a vegetable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound parts 'garden' and 'egg' allow a learner to infer an edible, egg-shaped thing grown in gardens, so the broad idea of a vegetable or eggplant-like fruit is partly derivable from the constituents. However, the specific conventional meaning — a West African variety of eggplant called 'garden egg' — is regional and lexically conventional, so the exact referent is not fully predictable without exposure.
Etymology
Garden egg comes from small, egg-shaped fruits that people grew in their home garden. Because the fruit looks like an egg and is eaten as a 'vegetable', people began to call it a 'garden egg', and today the name means a West African kind of 'eggplant'.