snow pea
2
2.3
- noun
- /snoʊ pi/
:
guisante chino
- I enjoy eating snow peas raw as a healthy snack.
- snow pea pods
- fresh snow peas
- blanched snow peas
Examples
-
Normally, I have no use for bean sprouts and snow peas, even at half the price.
Fiction book (2000) -
We're also serving a DeBragga and Spitler New York Strip with a side order of fries, and the salad is snow pea and radish with a cider vinaigrette.
-
But anyway, his question is why are my snow peas going yellow from the bottom up?
-
Those snow peas you brought me look fine.
Fiction book (1994) -
Six bucks a pound for snow peas!
Fiction book (2000) -
Only steamed chicken and snow peas for you.
-
We have, let's see, snow peas right here growing on these little trellises.
-
The point is that a guy rang up to discuss his snow peas growing over the six-foot fence.
Blog text (14) -
He was rummaging through the stir-fry looking for more snow peas.
Fiction book (1997) -
She collected five good-sized lettuce heads and a handful of snow peas, glancing at the tomato plants while she picked.
Fiction book (1994)
Synonyms
A pea plant with soft, flat pods that you can eat whole
A small green vegetable with flat pods you eat whole while young
A pea plant with thick soft pods that you can eat
A type of pea plant that makes soft pods you can eat whole
How Edible
Surface Forms
Morphology
snow + pea
The noun is compositionally a modifier + noun, so a B1 learner who knows 'snow' and 'pea' can infer this refers to a particular kind of pea (i.e., a variety related to the modifier). However, the precise culinary/structural properties (flat, edible pods eaten whole while unripe) are not directly predictable from 'snow' and require lexical knowledge, so the relation is only partly transparent. Cross-linguistically such modifier+pea compounds often denote varietal types, supporting partial transparency rather than full transparency.
Etymology
Snow pea may come from the thin, pale pods that can look like a light dusting of snow on the plant, and because people 'eat the whole pod' while the pea is still young, the name came to mean this flat, edible pea.