Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
wild cabbage

wild cabbage

2.6
A wild leafy plant that is the ancestor of garden vegetables like kale or broccoli
  • noun
  • UK
translation icon : col silvestre
  • Researchers studied the genetic makeup of wild cabbage to better understand plant evolution.

Examples

  • The wild cabbage is considered the ancestor of various cultivated vegetables like broccoli and kale.

  • like eating a little wild cabbage

    Supervixens (1975)

  • The wild cabbage is often found growing along coastal cliffs in Europe.

Synonyms

Brassica oleracea
vswild cabbage
  • Specialized
6.6

A plant that includes vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and Brussels sprouts

is the specific wild form native to coastal western Europe and ancestral to crops

Surface Forms

wild cabbage singular
wild cabbages plural

Morphology

wild + cabbage

The meaning 'a cabbage growing naturally/not domesticated' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'wild' (living naturally) with 'cabbage' (the head vegetable). This straightforward modifier + noun composition is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand the MWE even without botanical or historical details.

Etymology

Wild cabbage comes from tough cabbages that grew naturally on coastal cliffs long before people farmed them. So wild and cabbage together mean a 'cabbage that grows in the wild', and these wild plants became the original form of the cabbages we eat today.