Lima

How to spell lima

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lima

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lima mean?

1. nounA flat, pale green or white edible bean grown for food, also called the butter bean.

Lima in a sentence

• The stew thickens nicely once the lima beans soften.

• She soaked the dried lima overnight before cooking dinner.

Where does lima come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word is a place name pressed into service as a common noun. The lima bean takes its name from Lima, the capital of Peru, the port through which the beans were shipped to Europe and North America from the early 1500s onward; growers and grocers simply called the variety after its point of origin. The city name itself is a Spanish reshaping of an older Quechua word, Rímac, the name of the river running through the valley, which meant roughly 'the talker' or 'the speaker', a reference to a famous oracle. Because the word began as a proper noun, English writers long capitalised it, and you still see the bean written either 'lima' or 'Lima'. The same name was later chosen for the letter L in the NATO phonetic alphabet, again borrowing the familiar city. A small spelling trap is that English speakers say the bean as 'LY-muh' while the city and the radio code are usually said 'LEE-muh', yet all three share the identical four letters.

How the word is built

• lima (from the place name Lima, capital of Peru)