Potatoes

How to spell potatoes

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce potatoes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does potatoes mean?

1. nounMore than one of the starchy edible tubers grown as a staple vegetable.

Potatoes in a sentence

• She peeled a sack of potatoes for the family dinner.

• The recipe calls for three large potatoes cut into cubes.

Where does potatoes come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

The word came into English in the middle of the 1500s from the Spanish patata, which the Spanish had themselves borrowed from batata, a word in the Taino language of the Caribbean for the sweet potato. Early English speakers initially applied the name to the sweet potato, only later transferring it to the unrelated white tuber brought from the Andes. The plural settled on the form ending in -oes, following the same pattern as tomatoes and heroes, where an -e is inserted before the -s after a final -o. That inserted -e is exactly the spelling trap: the singular potato has no e, but the plural quietly gains one. The word travelled from a New World language through Spanish ships and Iberian ports into English, making it one of the earliest American loanwords in the language.

How the word is built

• potato (the tuber)
• -es (plural suffix added to words ending in -o)