Juice

How to spell juice

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce juice

What does juice mean?

1. nounThe liquid naturally contained in or extracted from fruit, vegetables, or meat.
2. verbTo extract the liquid from fruit or vegetables.

Juice in a sentence

• noun

  She poured a tall glass of orange juice at breakfast.

• verb

  Every morning she likes to juice a few carrots and apples.

• noun

  The recipe calls for the juice of two fresh lemons.

• verb

  You can juice the limes by hand if you do not own a press.

Where does juice come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Juice came into English in the 1200s from the Old French word jus, which meant the liquid or sap of plants, fruit, or meat. That French word descended from the Latin ius, which literally meant 'broth, sauce, or soup', the savoury liquid in which something was cooked. Over time the meaning narrowed in English toward the liquid squeezed naturally from fruit and vegetables, although it still survives in the sense of meat juices when cooking. The same Latin ius lies behind the word 'jus' that menus still use for a thin meat gravy. The spelling trap is the quiet pairing of u and i after the j, followed by the soft -ce ending that sounds like an s, so writers can be tempted toward 'juse' or 'juce'.

How the word is built

• juice (single root; from Latin ius 'broth, sauce', via Old French jus)