Asparagus

How to spell asparagus

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce asparagus

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does asparagus mean?

1. nounA cultivated plant grown for its tender green or white edible spears.

Asparagus in a sentence

• She steamed the asparagus and served it with melted butter.

• Fresh asparagus appears in the shops only for a few weeks each spring.

Where does asparagus come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word travelled into English from the Latin asparagus, which the Romans had taken directly from the Greek asparagos (also written aspharagos), a term for a tender young shoot or sprout sent up by certain plants. The Greek root is generally connected to an older idea of swelling or springing up, which suited a vegetable prized for its rapidly growing spears. English adopted the Latin form in the late medieval period, and by the seventeenth century a folk pronunciation had reshaped it into 'sparrow-grass', a homely corruption that stayed in common use for two hundred years before the proper Latin spelling won out again. The modern challenge for writers is the run of unstressed vowels in the middle, since the second and third syllables both reduce to a vague 'uh' sound that gives no clue whether to write a, e, or u. Remembering the single classical root asparag- helps fix that all three of those soft vowels are simply the letter a.

How the word is built

• asparag- (from Greek asparagos: a young shoot or sprout)
• -us (Latin noun ending)