Broccoli

How to spell broccoli

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce broccoli

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does broccoli mean?

1. nounA green vegetable with a thick stalk and a dense head of tightly clustered flower buds, eaten cooked or raw.

Broccoli in a sentence

• She steamed the broccoli for a few minutes before serving dinner.

• The recipe calls for a head of broccoli chopped into small florets.

Where does broccoli come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word comes straight from Italian, where broccoli is the plural of broccolo, meaning 'a little sprout' or 'the flowering head of a cabbage'. That word is itself a diminutive of brocco, meaning 'a shoot' or 'a small nail or spike', which traces back to the Latin broccus, describing something projecting or sticking out, often used of a jutting tooth. The name fits the vegetable beautifully, since the edible part is the tight cluster of immature flower buds standing up on their stalks. English took the word over in the seventeenth century as the vegetable spread north from Italy, keeping the Italian double c and the plural -oli ending intact. That faithful Italian spelling is exactly the trap: writers expect an English single c, yet the word demands the double c of brocco and a single l before the i.

How the word is built

• brocc- (from Italian broccolo: a cabbage sprout)
• -oli (Italian plural ending)